Introduction

We are always making little but important changes to our VGA test system platform here at TweakTown - a faster CPU, a bump in core speed, new memory, different hard drive and other bits and pieces.

Why does this upgrade deserve its own article? Well simply put, it’s quite a significant upgrade as our main test system which conducts almost all of our graphics cards reviews moves from our old love AMD and its Athlon X2 processor to the new dreamy eyed Intel and its Core 2 Duo processor - overclocked through the roof.

After having a quick look at the core components used and then we will dive into a simple head to head of our old but loved AMD test bed compared directly against the new Intel based monster.

We know that the Core 2 Duo is going to be faster (at least we hope) but how much better is it? Where are we going to see improvements - low resolution, high resolution, real world games or synthetic benchmarks?

Let’s take a look at our VGA test system upgrade! Without a doubt, it will also provide you a guide as to the type of performance increases you can except from upgrading your PC.