Your thoughts on Pentium D's...

[asdftt123]

I haven't been following technology advancements lately, but it seems to me that little has been mentioned about the Pentium D. When was this introduced and was it ever a mainstream CPU in the desktop world? The laptop I use for school runs on a crappy 1.6ghz Pentium M Banias, 768mb DDR 333, FX 5200...at work, I use two computers with Pentium D Smithfields @ 2.8ghz and it totally destroys my 1.6ghz Pentium M. Does anyone on these forums use Pentium D for everyday uses and gaming...how does it run? Is the Core 2 series really that much better of a processor? Thanks.

 

[adairusmc]

I had a Pentium D in my media center machine when I got it, a Pentium D 840 to be exact. I replaced it with an E4300 it runs more or less just as fast, but draws much less power and runs cooler. Yes, Core2Duo's are that much better.

That is the only experience I have with a Pentium D. It ran okay when I had it, but it was a furnace.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Read This

 

[Aluvus]

The first Pentium Ds were released in May 2005, just before the Athlon 64 X2.

And yes, the Core 2 series are better in essentially any measure you care to choose. They perform better, using less power, and are an all-around superior design.

 

[PCTC2]

Yes. I used 150 Pentium D 820's @ 2.8GHz for 1 year (I did technical support for a year at a local school). They were horrible. My Core2Duo Mobile T7200 @ 2.0GHz kills it. My Core2Duo E6400 @ 2.933GHz left it in the dust. I'm not even going to compare it to my overclocked Q6600 @ 2.7GHz for multi-threaded applications.

But of course a dual-core Pentium D @ 2.8GHz w/ a 800MHz FSB would blow away a single-core Pentium M @ 1.6GHz w/ a 400MHz FSB. They are both net-burst technology-based. But the Core architecture is much more efficient and faster clock-for-clock than Net-burst. Pentium D's were Intel's first realization that they weren't going to get past 3.733GHz so they went for better efficiency and more cores. Pentium D's were the same as Core2Quads are now: 2 previous generation cores on a single die. Pentium 4's were horribly inefficient and hot (especially Prescotts) so 2 of them on a single die would be even hotter.

 

[Stumps]

I have a 820@3.4Ghz in one of my back up rigs, it's not the fastest thing out there but it does the job.

I don't have any heat issues with mine because I'm water cooling it, but when I was building and selling PC with them they used to run pretty hot, but were always pretty reliable...mostly.

And yes a C2D is considerably better...at everything.

 

[Aluvus]

Originally posted by: PCTC2
But of course a dual-core Pentium D @ 2.8GHz w/ a 800MHz FSB would blow away a single-core Pentium M @ 1.6GHz w/ a 400MHz FSB. They are both net-burst technology-based.

The Pentium M microarchitecture was based on the P6 microarchitecture, not Netburst.

 

[flxnimprtmscl]

Yeah, they're great chips. If you need something to heat your house that is. I'd consider one in lieu of a space heater but that's about it.

 

[stevty2889]

There is absolutly no reason to get a pentium-d. They use more power, run hot, and are slower than the competition. If you are on a tight budget and AMD X2 is the better choice, if you can afford a core 2 duo, then get one. The pentium-d was Intel's response to the X2, it's basicly 2 pentium-4's slapped together, the only advantage it had at all over the X2 at the time was cost, but lagged behind in performance.

 

[Markfw]

The 1.6 laptop (single core) should equal or beat the 2.8 Pentium D on single threaded apps, except the Hard disk could be holding you back on the lappy (probably 4200 rpm vs desktop 7200 rpm)

Lets please not even talk about those old slow flamethrowers, it makes me ill to even think about them anymore.

 

[hans007]

if you didnt care about the heat output the pentium D was an allright CPU. I used an 820 for a while and since they were so cheap it was a really cheap way to get dual core when it came out as at the time AMD was still dominant with socket 939 and charging a lot more for their CPUs.

That was why i and many here got them , the 820 and 805 were very very cheap. They also were mainstream for quite a while because intel had a huge oversupply of them and they were all that the 90nm plants they had were producing so almost any mainstream system with intel inside was runing them .

It wawsnt the perfect cpu, but prescott was useable, and 2 prescotts was well... pretty ok.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Pentium-D == keychain material. Seriously.

Runs hot, runs slow, really not much going for it at all. Consider it obsolete.

Get an E2140 C2D, it will blow the Pentium-D away.

 

[FDCPCZ]

The 805 and 820 make good room heaters.
Rubbsh CPU's really avoid at all costs.
Used to be cheap as chips to buy but dearer than a Rolls Royce to run.

An overclocked 805 can disipate 200 watts or more.
Got a few burnt out MB's here that the 805's killed.
A result of the furnace temps that the VR's were forced to run at.

The 65nm ones are better in as much that they run cooler and clock higher.
Even at 4 GHZ which you can reach on a good un they get trounced by X2's.

 

[hans007]

I had one well over a year ago. The thing is you could get them for like $80-90 oem. and at those prices they were much cheaper than the cheapest AMD dual core which as the time was the 939 3800+ x2 and probably in the $180 range.

that said, you can probably get an 820 for $50 now. At $50 its only $20 more to get an e2140 and its probably worth spending the $20. but when it was $90 for a 820 vs. $180 for a x2 3800+ it was definitely not crappy. I could live with using a bit more power to just get dual core and not pay the AMD premium at the time.

Look at it this way. If say barcelona was a really bad chip (i'm not saying it is) but lets say its 80% the performance per clock than a q6600. But AMD was giving them away for say $120, even if it used up 160 watts of power, i'm sure a lot of you would still consider getting one.