I'm Getting rid of my old pc which is pretty much same as this one http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/POWERFULL-7-HO...=item27e84f1c43

I'm just wanting to spend less than £40 on a dual core PC and its a toss up between these 2 below, I just want to know which is better performance? I will add my own graphics card, memory & HDD so its just processing power i'm bothered about.

Core 2 Duo - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-dc5800-desk...=item19f66146f5

Dual core - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CHEAP-Dell-Opt...=item1c48474f06

P.S. Processor-wise are they a reasonable upgrade compared to my current P4 3.2ghz Hyperthread?

both are horrific by today's standard but the core 2 duo is a hell of a lot quicker than the pentiom d.
you get what you pay for and your looking at marginal improvment over your current spec

I havent checked for you but id also not count on being able to swp your ram

Rather than spend good money have you tried looking on freecycle etc. you can pick up some older kit but you will have to quick as it tends to go quickly.

Its ok the PC is only being used for internet and a few low graphic games, I'm really not to fussed about having a good PC.

The current PC does the job, i'm just thinking a dual core will be better than my Pentium 4 HT & £40 will get me Dual core.

So take the HP Core 2 duo over the Dell dual core, thanks.

Will have a look, i'm in no rush.

Have you purchased yet?

I may have some memory sticks you can have for upgrade for price of postage.

no not bought yet, I have 3gb ddr2 which fits these machines

I have to butt in here, Intel P4 to Core 2 Duo would not be a minimal upgrade.

I still run a Core 2 Quad at home with 8Gb RAM, with 8Gb RAM, and can tell you it'll be a solid upgrade from a P4 for the money.

I have a machine with E8600, performs well.

Thanks, I was hoping I'd see some difference.

To be fair Sam did actually say it would be much faster. The marginal comment was I think more a reflection of how dated both processors are. The passmark for the core 2 will be many times higher than a pentium D but thats not saying much compared to some recent spec processors but obviously that would need more investment.

i have a Dell precision T7500 6 core ... i use it as a day to day machine ... this is my 4-5 Dell precision machine they are a work station .... in other words .... 24-7 working ..... machine .....bullet proof

For clarification, the core 2 duo looking at the benchmarks is massively quicker than what you had, but CPU will only get you so far, your looking at a PC with 2gb of ram and probably a 5200rpm 80gb hdd... with vista. The CPU is faster but you still have to pass data though the ram and slow HDD.
This is what I would consider a minimum spec for a vista PC, if you disable everything shiny in the interface.

I could have just said yes, its quicker but I wanted to show you other things you should be looking at. Get some cheep memory in there and look at replacing the HDD for a SSD (if your not on IDE only) all very cheep upgrades and offer probably more bang for £