Intel Pentium D 805 - Dual Core on a Budget
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 7, 2006 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
When Intel introduced its first line of dual core desktop processors we were all shocked at how cheap you could buy them. The Pentium D 820, running at 2.8GHz, was the first Intel processor we recommended since Intel's Northwood core. It was no surprise to anyone that Prescott was too hot and offered no real performance advantage to justify its downside when compared to AMD's Athlon 64 CPUs. With the Pentium D, Intel still had the heat problems and underwhelming performance, but for heavy multitaskers and users of multithreaded applications the performance could not be beat. The Pentium D 820 debuted at $241, putting it at about the same price as a single core Athlon 64 3500+.
AMD eventually responded by introducing an Athlon 64 X2 3800+, priced at $354. While it was still more expensive than Intel's entry level dual core, it was a step in the right direction for AMD and the X2 3800+ quickly became a favorite among enthusiasts. The X2 3800+ managed to outperform, in many cases, Intel's most expensive dual core processors while running a lot cooler and being offered at a much better price point.
Intel's ability to undercut AMD's pricing on dual core processors is not too difficult to understand. Until recently, AMD has only had a single plant producing 90nm processors on 200mm wafers, meaning that every dual core CPU they produce made a serious dent in the number of total CPUs they can produce. Even though AMD's new Fab 36 just started shipping revenue generating product, dual core chips will continue to come out of Fab 30 for the time being. Intel, by comparison, has a total of five 300mm fabs currently in production that crank out both 90nm and 65nm CPUs. Being able to produce chips on 300mm wafers itself means that you can make more chips at a time, but also having many more fabs helps as well. Intel estimates that its five 300mm fabs can produce as many chips as approximately eight of its older 200mm fabs. What this all boils down to is that pricing its entry-level dual core processor in the $200 - $250 range is not too difficult for Intel, but with the introduction of the Pentium D 900 series the deal was about to get even sweeter.
With the Pentium D 900 series, Intel took its dual core processors and started making them on a 65nm process. Along with the die shrink Intel equipped their 65nm offerings with twice the L2 cache as their 90nm 800 series, thus making them even more desirable. The icing on the cake was that the Pentium D 900 series was not much more expensive than the 800 series it was replacing; the Pentium D 920 can be found today for as low as $244.
With Intel intent on moving all of its processors over to 65nm, the older 90nm Pentium D line got a nice price cut. The once $240+ Pentium D 820 is now a $160 chip, making it around the price of a single core Athlon 64 3200+. Although the single core AMD CPU will still do better in gaming, the Pentium D 820 will definitely hold its own in any multithreaded environments or encoding tasks. To even further move the market to dual core, Intel quietly introduced yet another processor - the 90nm Pentium D 805. Clocked at 2.66GHz with a meager 533MHz FSB (compared to 800MHz of the other Pentium D CPUs), the Pentium D 805 can be had for as little as $132.
Sit back and think about that for a moment; for $133 you are getting a dual core processor that can run in any LGA-775 Intel 945 based motherboard. It wasn't very long ago that a SMP system would cost you significantly more than a high end desktop setup, but thanks to the move to dual core CPUs and some very aggressive pricing on Intel's part, you can now have a dual core processor for about $20 more than a Celeron.
Admittedly we've been a bit too high end focused lately here on AnandTech, as seemingly all that's been released these days is Extreme Edition this and FX that. But if you have to upgrade today, now is truly a great time to buy something low end as you await the next-generation of CPUs and platforms from AMD and Intel.
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Briggsy - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link
Whilst any new system I build will have 'be quiet, dammit' as one of the core requirements, this processor seems to be good value, if only because it is so cheap for what it is, and that it surely will overclock by 25% to catch up with the 3800+ in performance (although the 3800+ can overclock to leave it in the dust, heh).Of course here in the UK power prices aren't 10c/kwh except overnight on economy power plans, so the value does start to look quite poor if you're into buying systems to last 3 years.
Remedyy - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link
One article I'm looking forward to, if Anand could is webserver test. A test showing how it performs in server work over a socket 939 or IT looking to upgrade from Dual socket 370 Pentium-III's or Dual Socket A Athlon MP's maybe curious about how this Pentium-D 805 may or may not be an improvement over their previous box being hosted. The TCO is so low, but is the performance there in SQL or other front end entry level work?Asus & Supermicro make many entry level Server boards based on the Socket 775 that are ready to run with a chip like the 805.
Maybe Jarred can answer that? :)
Woodchuck2000 - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link
Bought it a couple of weeks ago, bundled with a cheap 'n' nasty motherboard for £125 - bargain!Runs very quickly compared with my old Sempron 2600+, overclocks happily to 3.32GHz (667FSB) on air with no v-core increase. Given the incredibly cheap motherboard and stock cooling, when I upgrade my motherboard and cooling in a few months' time, I won't be surprised if it hits 3.6Ghz without too much hassle...
kierandill - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link
Likewise; mine arrived last Thursday along with a Gigabyte motherboard from NewEgg. By that evening I had it running stably in Windows XP at a 40% overclock (3.72HGz) with stock (Intel retail box) heatsink/fan and no vCore increase. Idles in the 42C range. Amazing. I never got my Athlon XP more than about 15% on simple air cooling.I don't have any of the bencmarks from this article so I can't say how it compares to these exactly, but it is up in the AMD 64 X2 4400+ neighborhood on the non-3D benches I do have. Only real 3D bench I have is Q3 timedemo, and most sites use something else. FYI I get ~271fps on timedemo1 @1280x1024 with an Ati X700Pro PCIex.
Furen - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link
Care to share the motherboard brand? Fry's is bundling this chip with an ECS mobo for $150 and I'm mighty tempted to build yet another PC if it'll be dirt cheap...poohbear - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link
actually there are currently 3 games that provide support for dualcores, Quake 4, COD2, and the newly released Oblivion. it'd be nice to see some tests on Oblivion to see how much it benefits from dual core cpus (especially when doing some of the .ini tweaks for dual cores that reportedly provide a big boost in performance).nordhus - Sunday, April 9, 2006 - link
4 games, City of Heroes/City of Villains also supports dualcores.JarredWalton - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link
Is there some special step to enable SMP support in Oblivion? If there is, I haven't heard about it yet and I'm apparently missing out on vastly improved performance!As it stands, I've been playing a lot of Oblivion, and I'll be damned if it's actually using both cores in anything resembling an efficient manner. Performance of the two cores together never breaks 100% (out of 200%), which is indicative of single-threaded performance. Windows may be executing gaming instructions on both cores, but the game appears to be as single core as Doom 3, Far Cry, BF2, etc.
poohbear - Saturday, April 8, 2006 - link
yep go to the ini file and change these settings:http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showt...">http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showt...
all the increases have mostly been on dual core cpus. cheers.
JarredWalton - Sunday, April 9, 2006 - link
Nothing like a game that supports dual cores, but only if you know how to properly hacked the INI file. There seem to be quite a few other hidden options for Oblivion in the INI files as well. I haven't had a chance to actually run benchmarks with the SMP hacks enabled, but that will be coming soon enough.