Pentium D vs Core Two Duo chips

ublinia2

how much better is the Core two duo chips than a pentium D duo chip in terms of speed etc and can you explain the difference between them ?

Cuddlesworth

about this much

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Warning: may not be actual size

Endurance Man

Pentium D's suck, Core two chips dont . All depends what you need it for, if you're just browsing the net and playing music a pentium d is fine.

Anti

A cheap c2d will be better then the most expensive pentium D, Put it that way.

gerryk

Endurance Man wrote:

Pentium D's suck, Core two chips dont . All depends what you need it for, if you're just browsing the net and playing music a pentium d is fine.

Would you care to elaborate on 'Pentium Ds suck'? Do you mean smithfield or presler? Is it just the power consumption you don't like or something else? I'm sorry, but bull**** generalisations piss me off.

Anti wrote:

A cheap c2d will be better then the most expensive pentium D, Put it that way.

That's not the case at all... a Pentium D 960 or 965 will blow the doors off any but the more expensive C2Ds.

Endurance Man

Doh

sceptre

Endurance Man wrote:

You know what pisses me off, guys coming on acting all ignorant on a certain subject, asking a stupid question, and then realising they actually know everything about the subject :rolleyes: . Are you trying to get someone to do your homework or something?

Perhaps I'm misreading your intention but that comes across a litle heavy-handed given that gerryk didn't start the thread.

Personally I don't think "X sucks, Y doesn't" as much of an answer to criticise someone else's on given that if you're just browsing the net and playing music a P3 is fine. Heck, you could do both perfectly adequately on less.

Endurance Man

sceptre wrote:

Perhaps I'm misreading your intention but that comes across a litle heavy-handed given that gerryk didn't start the thread.

Personally I don't think "X sucks, Y doesn't" as much of an answer to criticise someone else's on given that if you're just browsing the net and playing music a P3 is fine. Heck, you could do both perfectly adequately on less.

Crisis ><, sorry lads had had one two many beers, my bad.

Tom Dunne

Tom's Hardware has a CPU comparison page here.

TerrorFirmer

Endurance Man wrote:

Pentium D's suck, Core two chips dont . All depends what you need it for, if you're just browsing the net and playing music a pentium d is fine.

Pentium D's don't suck. Like the Pentium 4, they may have superior rivals for the same price rendering them essentially poor value, but equally like the P4 this does not mean they are crap processors. A Pentium 4 even, let alone a Pentium D, is still sufficent for intensive games and applications generally speaking as long as your other hardware is up to scratch.

For browsing the net and playing music, a 400mhz Celeron or k6 is 'fine'!

Champ

My own feedback for whatever its worth.;)

It is true that the latest Pentium D generation based on the Presler core does help a number of issues such as power and heat as it's based on the newer 65nm technology like the Core Duos. It is however still essentially a pair of P4 Prescotts slapped together ina single die with the inherent short comings of the core design such as an usually large execution pipeline with high heat generation. It's by no means a terrible CPU but i felt it was somewhat rushed, and theres only so much 65nm can compensate for ina poor design.

The Core Duo is a thing of beauty:D. While Pentium Ds may be released clocked higher, it's because they need the extra "speed" as they do less work per cycle as the Core Duos do and often generate more heat in comparison.
The power of the Core Duo lies in the very successful base Pentium M design. Essentially its been made to be as efficent as possible both in execution(versus pure clock speed) and power-wise.
Summarily put: Core Duos will in general be faster, run cooler, consume less power. Often by a significant margin.;)

These days Pentium Ds have been shifted to the budget market. They're acceptable CPUs for users who just desire dual core capabilities.

riptide

Actually guys, the top end Pressler will compete very nicely with an E6300 or E6400 at stock.

EDIT: I'll go as far as saying that Pent. EE 965 owns the 6400 in most cases other. the E6600 and above start to Hammer the pressler 965.

ublinia2

Is the Pentium D - two pentium 4 chips together ?? and would you notice the difference in computer performance in comparison with a pentium 4 , pentium3.

I will be using thinking of buying a new computer and am between core two duo and Pentium D. All the computer will be used for is generally office apps - excel and word with being on the internet and music at the same time.

Ill also be using the PC for editing photographs, copying cds and the occassional game. Is there much need or point in spending the extra money for the core two duo? Do I need core two duo for Vista?

Also how do the AMD chips compare - are they as reliable and good performance wise? For example how would the AMD AthlonTM 64 X2 dual-core processor compare.

I presently have a six year old PC Pentium3 933 hz chip with 128 Mb Ram running windows 98 and am buying a new one to get XP and because its so slow and siezes up.

SeanW

Well, my understanding is something like this:

Core2Duo > AMD Athlon 64 X2 > Pentium. So you may very well want to consider an AMD setup because AMD tends to give lots of bang for your buck - they've lost the top spot in terms of top-range processing power but their kit is still pretty decent value for money in mid-range applications.

Any relatively recent chip should handle Windows Vista.

zilog_jones

ublinia2 wrote:

Is the Pentium D - two pentium 4 chips together ?? and would you notice the difference in computer performance in comparison with a pentium 4 , pentium3.

Well there's been a hell of a lot of different Pentium 4's since 2002 or whenever they came out - they have improved significantly since then. The first Pentium D's were just two Prescott's slapped together, and Prescotts came out in 2004. I dunno how much they've developed since then.

Ill also be using the PC for editing photographs, copying cds and the occassional game. Is there much need or point in spending the extra money for the core two duo? Do I need core two duo for Vista?

Well you'll get better performance (and lower power consumption/heat) from a Core 2 Duo (in most cases), so even though you probably won't utilise the power it has it will have a better chance of still being a half-decent PC for longer than a Pentium D.

Also how do the AMD chips compare - are they as reliable and good performance wise? For example how would the AMD AthlonTM 64 X2 dual-core processor compare.

An X2 will perform better in a lot of areas (and again consume less power) than a Pentium D, and many be cheaper too (though PD's seem to be getting dirt cheap these days), but still isn't comparable performance-price wise to a Core 2 Duo.

I presently have a six year old PC Pentium3 933 hz chip with 128 Mb Ram running windows 98 and am buying a new one to get XP and because its so slow and siezes up.

I'd say the siezing up is due to crappy old Windows 98. If you get 512MB or more (about €40-50 second hand) it'd be good for Win2k or XP. I only just upgraded from a PIII-933 (with 512MB RAM and win2k) myself a few months ago (got a Core 2 Duo E6300), and TBH I don't notice an awful lot of difference between the two doing simple things like web browsing and using MS Office. However, iTunes ran like a dog on the PIII, and I'm sure Office 2007 would too, and stuff like video processing/encoding (which I do a lot of on occasions) is infinately faster.

uberpixie

ublinia2 wrote:

I will be using thinking of buying a new computer and am between core two duo and Pentium D. All the computer will be used for is generally office apps - excel and word with being on the internet and music at the same time.

Ill also be using the PC for editing photographs, copying cds and the occassional game. Is there much need or point in spending the extra money for the core two duo? Do I need core two duo for Vista?

Either CPU will serve you well for what you want to do. Def get a dual core of some sort as you will get the use out of it. Would lean toward the core 2 duo myself as it does run cooler and uses less power.


For Vista you want 1024MB of Ram at least and a half dacent stand alone gfx card, avoid the built in Intel gfx as they are very weak and will not run Vista with all the eye candy on and will be hopeless for any game you want to play the odd time.

(or at the very least make sure your PC comes with a PCI express x16 slot so you can add a better gfx card later if you need it.)

Also go for Vista Home Premium when you are getting your PC, Vista Home basic lacks some of the nice features such as media centre, the eye candy and one or two of the back up options.

So avoid Vista Basic like the plague.

Gurgle

ublinia2 wrote:

All the computer will be used for is generally office apps - excel and word with being on the internet and music at the same time.

Ill also be using the PC for editing photographs, copying cds and the occassional game.

Pretty much any processor will do you nicely for that - just get lots of RAM. (Assuming 'The Occasional game' doesn't mean you want to run Doom 3)

ublinia2 wrote:

Is there much need or point in spending the extra money for the core two duo? Do I need core two duo for Vista?

No and no. RAM RAM RAM

ublinia2 wrote:

Also how do the AMD chips compare - are they as reliable and good performance wise? For example how would the AMD AthlonTM 64 X2 dual-core processor compare.

For the Apps your talking about, you would be hard pressed to notice the difference.

ublinia2 wrote:

I presently have a six year old PC Pentium3 933 hz chip with 128 Mb Ram running windows 98 and am buying a new one to get XP and because its so slow and siezes up.

Bump the RAM up to 1Gb, wipe the hard drive and install windows XP and you'll probably get another 3 years out of it.

Capt'n Midnight

What will it be used for ?

For many games the video card GPU is the limiting factor as the number crunching is done there and all the CPU does is shovel some data to the cards and keep an eye on the rest of the system.

At the other extreme example an old Dos wordprocessor , it doesn't use any advanced features or new instructions, all the memory space would fit in cache so memory and fsb are almost meaning less.

On a laptop the CPU is not normally upgradable so easier to justify a better one in case needed later on, on a desktop you have to decide would the money be better spent on more RAM / better cards etc.

riptide

Well.. Pentium D's are very cheap at the moment. Even the Celeron D's are very cheap. Would you overclock said chips uberpixie. I got this Celeron 352 for €65 off a guy in Poland. They're probably not much dearer from a proper shop on the net. And you'll get somilar OC from a Pent D on stock cooling. http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc?id=158969

astrofool

I'd get an E6300, you'd probably save the difference in electricity anyway over the years and it gives a far better 'base' system to work with.

And yea, RAM is most important, 1gig for XP, 2gig for Vista (if you're buying new). If you're getting a Dell, you can often specify to get 1 stick of RAM and buy another yourself from shop4memory or Komplett and save a good bit of money (Dell extra options are ridiculously overpriced).

DaSilva

Seriously, dont ask question like this unless you are giving a very specific use for comparison, otherwise you just invite the tech "groupies", who think that a 3DMark benchmark is the be and end all of comparison. As you can see this thread resembles the pissing contest that is known as the graphics card market.

For me, the best CPU is the one that uses the least power, as I do very basic stuff on my laptop, email, webpages, coding.

ublinia2

One more question - Is AthlonTM 64 X2 dual-core processor 4200+ faster than AMD® AthlonTM 64 processor 3500+ ?

TerrorFirmer

Yes, it's both dual core and clocked faster.