To "D" or not to "D" that is the question! :)

[wing]

I am currently looking at the pentium D processors and having no experience using them but have only heard what I have heard in reviews am a little currious to thier worth.

First Question would be...or i guess statement and you can correct me if I am wrong... I assume a lower clock PentiumD would be faster than a Higher clock 478 Prescott...correct? So say If i was to get a 2.8Ghz Pentium D would I end up with a much faster machine than my current 3.2Ghz P4 Socket478 Prescott?

Looking at the prices i see that they jump by leaps and bounds as that clock speed increases... can get a 3.0 for ~330 but a 3.2 for ~530 big difference for 200Mhz!!!

Any insight would be awesome!!

 

[hkh]

While it depends what you are doing if you are playing games then the higher clock speed will win but if you are encoding then the P-D will win.

 

[xTrEmEoVrClOcKr]

For overclocking, the 478 prescotts will go higher, the main problem with the pentium Ds is the heat issue, they run a lot hotter than the 478 prescotts IMO.

 

[AdvanS13]

multi tasking yes, if not no.


prices will probably drop when cdm and presler hit

 

[wing]

I used to have my 478 prescott tweaked up to about 3.8ish (stock 3.2) on air cooling but something happened and i lost my bios settings and have been too lazy to screw with it to a day to get it overclocked perfectly again.

Either way I will be going with a LGA weather it is a D or not....

Well thing is I do both...I do alot of video editing...and alot of gaming....that is when I have time which lately is rarely!!

Does the same stand with the LGA's with clock speed being good for games and the D being better for encoding?

Thanks!

 

[jenko]

May be worth looking at AMDs dual core cpus, if your changing mobo aswell, just a suggestion as you said you game aswell.

 

[AdvanS13]

the favorites around here are the 3.2-3.6 chips. a similar clocked d will do just the same in games at the same speed, but if you add more tasks to your gaming, example: burn a movie or whatever, you will have no slowdown or interruptions to your gaming. if you tend to do those things above at the same time more frequently, i would definately go dual core if you want ultra smoothness. if it's on and off, just save your money and get a single core prescott.

either a 830 (PD) or an upper 600 series (prescott) series chip will do you good.

 

[batboy]

The main advantage of the dual core Pentium D is when you are multitasking or using multi-thread programs. At this point in time, the vast majority of games are single thread programs. That will probably change in another year. The 6XX series P-4 will O/C higher and run cooler, plus they do very well at video encoding too. For gaming, the vid card is far more important than whether you have Intel or AMD. So, save a little cash and get a 630 P-4 (which supports 64-bit technology), an Abit or Asus i945/i955 mobo, 2X 1 gig PQI Turbo DDR2-667 RAM, and the best vid card you can buy with the money you have left over. Overclock it to 4.2 gig or so and you'll be good to go, plus it will be futureproof.

 

[wing]

I appreciate all of your insight very much and today made the order...

I went with the:
CPU INTEL|P4 650 3.4G 800M 775 2M R - Retail

Went with the 640 as it has the extra MB of L2 cash versus the 540 or the 540J (and was actually cheaper)

I took your above comments to use in the decision, when I game...I am only running the game (asside from the instant messenger or outlook) and when Im encoding video generally I am doing just that or light work while its doing it (IM, watching a video, email, web browsing etc) But never encoding and gaming simultaneously, although that would be cool ...however unneccesary!

As a FYI I went with the Saphire Radeon X850XT for the video card, and 2GB of Corsair XMS2 TwinX2 Pro. Should be a sweet rig.

Thanks alot!

 

[batboy]

What mobo?

 

[AdvanS13]

mobo, at least get a 955x chipset or nforce.

 

[wing]

Oh sorry, how could I forget that...

ABit AW8-Max 3rd EyeII

 

[AdvanS13]

good choice, i like abit. you could also look into the stripped down asus nforce for 130ish at mwave...i think that will be my next board for the WIP rig im building soon here.

 

[wing]

I did at least a months worth of research before I did the last to come down to the Abit IC7-Max3 and I have absolutely loved that board. I am actually sad to obsolece it so soon!