Those 3 listed I was already aware of + I would like to add that #4 on that performance list should probably also be the chipset of the motherboard. Some have been known to be junk compared to others when it comes to performance.
Computer #1 the AM2+ motherboard has older chipset with GeForce 6150 and nForce 430
whereas...
Computer #2 the AM3 motherboard has the newer AMD 760G chipset.
*Havent found anything online yet to show measurable differences between them, but I can only assume that more modern AMD 760G chipset may come with performance advantages over the older nVidia chipset with keeping the existing quadcore CPU.
Fact is that the DDR2 800Mhz RAM is slower than the DDR3 1333Mhz RAM, (BUT) is the performance gain significant enough to be worth while to swap the CPU's between these boards I guess I am asking?
Is it going to be like night and day difference where I instantly see faster performance due to the fact that I was bottlenecking the full potential of the quadcore in the AM2+ motherboard that all of a sudden with the faster DDR3 RAM I am looking at a noticable difference or would I be for example making just a small advance in speed increase in which I am only shedding 1 second off of a load time for a videogame that otherwise runs with no problems on the slower memory.
This is a first time of thinking about migrating a CPU that was worth while to me to be migrated forward to more modern motherboard with faster RAM. But generally motherboards for the last 25+ years that I have been working on them were that the (CPU, Motherboard, RAM) were upgraded as a set usually because all 3 were at the end of their life cycle, or if not at the end of their life cycle, as better faster/more powerful data crunching components became available as they became affordable or acquired inexpensively, I'd end up installing more or faster RAM added of the same style such as SIMMs, DIMMs, RDRAM, SDRAM, DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 etc(whatever the memory slot and motherboard supported in relation to the CPU etc), or stuffing a faster CPU into the socket with more cache etc if the motherboards supported these performance increases. And then when the Motherboard, CPU, RAM combination hit its limit, I would buy a new Motherboard, CPU, and RAM and follow the same cycle as the prior computers used of stretching the life of the motherboard until its at its limits, and then upgrade all 3 hardware. This time though because of the cool AMD socket design of the AM2+, I started off with an AM2 x2 core CPU in 2008, and in 2010 installed an AM3 x4 core CPU. And in 2011 I needed to build up a cheap server, so I bought an AM3 motherboard, $40 Sempron 145 AM3 CPU, and 4GB of DDR3 and built it up and used it for its purpose. But the other day when I was adding an additional hard drive to this box I realized I could perform an upgrade for free with hardware I already have and the single-core Sempron Server would run plenty fast on DDR2 RAM.
But its not just going to involve swapping of the CPU's and applying new thermal compound, but I am also looking at potentially breaking the OS on both systems by drastic CPU changes. Usually sticking with the same processor family the system will boot and the Windows Activations will become broken, just requiring to activate with microsoft, but I have also run into situations where you have to perform a repair installation on a system when the CPU changed too drastically, and that is why I am running this past everyone here, is because it would be a shame to waste say 3 hrs time swapping CPU's and corrective actions for OS on both systems and not see any gain in performance because the gain is so small.
As far as overclocking, I avoid overclocking whenever possible, even if its safer today than in yester-years. I have done it before, but in the past it was to get an old dog to do new tricks back in the days when new computers were $1500 to 2000, and to run Quake 1 without lag, I ended up overclocking my 486DX2 66Mhz to 75Mhz using 25Mhz FSB x 3 instead of 33Mhz FSB x 2 and had a large peel and stick on aluminum heatsink without fan and I added a fan to blow across it. It worked for a few months and then the CPU melted down ( destabilized ). I then acquired a Pentium 75Mhz Dell tower for $25 at a computer show/swap meet (tower with no drives, just tower case and motherboard, cpu, and 32 MB EDO DIMM RAM) which ran the game way better back in the days of the Pentium II 233Mhz hitting the markets in 1997 ish. But then I was soon faced with Quake II coming out not to long later that required a Pentium 90Mhz minimum requirements and I was stuck once again in a situation of a computer that is too slow, and fortunately acquired a Pentium 133 that was being thrown away around 1998 to be able to run Quake II, although my friends who had rich parents bought them nice Pentium II 233 to 450Mhz systems with VooDoo Banshee cards etc that I wish i could have had myself for gaming. I myself had a Trident 8MB PCI videocard, while they had like 16MB of Video Ram and a GPU intended for games.
