Thread: Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad?

I have built my own computer with an ASUS P5K Deluxe WIFI motherboard, E6750 CPU w/1333 FSB, Intel P35 chip and 4 GB DDR2 memory running on Vista Ultimate 32bit. I want to upgrade my CPU with a quad core CPU, and possibly doing a complete reinstall so I can install my 64 bit Vista Ultimate. If I would install the 64 bit system, I would also install 8 GB DDR2 memory. My purpose for this is to speed up my computer. I do a lot of digital imaging work, movie making, etc, as a hobby. My questions are 1. If I decide not to change my OS and just upgrade from a Core 2 duo to a Core 2 quad, do I have to reinstall my OS, or just reboot? 2. Would you recommend upgrading from a 32 bit to a 64 bit Vista system? I would rather wait a year for Windows 7.

Thanks,

If your software is multi-threaded and can take advantage of four cores, by all means, go for it. But you'll need to do some research into your specific software.

Also take a look at your RAM usage. Just throwing RAM at something isn't going to make it faster if the program is using let's say, 2GB of RAM. But if you're using up your RAM and starting to use virtual memory\page file, then hell yes, more RAM will help and you'll of course have to go 64-bit to go beyond your 4GB of RAM. Hell, even going 64-Bit with your current setup will open up some unused RAM because of 32-bit limitations.

I hope that helps.

If you're doing a lot of multimedia work, then definitely get the quad core. As for the OS if you want to be able to use more memory (8 gigs) then you have to go 64-bit. Also keep in mind that 32-bit applications often require twice as much memory to store values they allocate. The reason is they are storing a 32-bit word in a 64-bit space, so for each word they use they take up an extra 32-bits of empty space.