Overclock: Intel® Pentium® D 920 Overclocking (Full Blown Mainstream Dual Core)

This is a follow up article for the affordable Intel® Pentium® D 805. This processor is very attractively priced, hovering just below $230 (less than Php12,500). If anyone is still taking it slow and still not convinced with the power of affordable dual core computing, this processor might be the final nail to seal the coffin of acceptance.

The Intel® Pentium® D 920 Processor is currently the lowest speed grade dual core processor based on the 900series processor for the mainstream market. It is based on 65nm/Presler core on the LGA775 package, and is priced very attractively with price costing less than Php12,000.00 (~$250). This is the first Presler core that has 2x2MB L2 cache, and will be trully attractive to dual-core users, and of course overclockers who are always hunting things on the cheap but are asking more for performance and that beter RAM access time.

Source:Intel® Pentium® D 920 Overclocking (Full Blown Mainstream Dual Core)

Tech Link (Overclock): A 4.1 GHz Dual Core at $130 - Can it be True?

THG has a new article posted, fresh from the get go. It's about an Intel® Pentium® D 805 with a great overclock. Now, when this processor was released eons ago (yeah, I know, it's just this year) many where skeptical about this processor. Some speculate they are "failed" or "reject" processors, bah, numb nuts I say. Others speculate the actual reason behind the pricing. Others thought these processors are just hype, not really doing anything good except basic multi-tasking. Bah, humbug.

Anyway, THG has their own "theory" about this processor

There aren't any significant differences between the two versions when it comes to energy saving functions or instruction sets, but it's easy to recognize from the B0 version that the Pentium D 805 really belongs to the second production series for this CPU. The motivation for a version update usually comes from further optimizations to the circuit layout or fabrication process, as well as corrections for design or behaviour errors. On all counts, the B0 version is an improvement over the older A0 version. Since this version could handle CPU clock rates of 3.2 GHz at the beginning of the series without any problems, a consequence of these improvements is that all B0 version CPUs should be able to handle CPU clock rates of at least 3.2 GHz. This was the theory we formulated before we started testing the Pentium D 805.

To read the full scoop, check it out.

Article: Intel® Pentium® D 805 and Intel® Pentium® D 820 Duel (Mainstream Dual Core Brethren)

Ever since the Intel® Pentium® D 805 Processor is released on the mainstream market, the computing world has been swarmed with mix emotion, denial, scrutiniy, mockery, excitement, and acceptance. And this isn't surprising, Intel® made a significant leap to bring Dual Core computing to even the most budget conscious consumer, paving the way for an upgrade, replacement, and even an extra PC.

And during this transition period from single core to dual core computing, there are many unknowns, ranging from questions such as whether the upgrade is worth it, performance increase against single core processors with higher rating or GHz speed, and even gaming. This short article will try to unravel the answers to some, if not all, of the questions.

Full Scoop:Article: Intel® Pentium® D 805 and Intel® Pentium® D 820 Duel (Mainstream Dual Core Brethren)

Tech Link (Overclock): "little test with 805 D 2660@1xx%oc"

An extreme overclocker manage to hit an amazing overclock with the youngest, most affordable Intel® dual core processor. Make no mistake though, this isn't something you'll do on a typical overclocking machine, and reserve only for those who have the guts, money, skills, money, perseverance, money, and more money.
_{Image owned by respective owner}

The overclocking adventure was done in two phases, one is on watercooling and the other is through sub cooling. The specification used is an Asus* P5WD2-E motherboard, and Corsair DDR2-5400 UL. At watercooling, the processor manage to hit 4.7GHz with 1.6vCore and with extreme cooling, world record overclock for this processor is achieved.

Check out his posting below:
XS
CPU-Z Validation

Tech Link (Processor): Yonah vs Presler

Another legendary overclocker posted an amazing comparison and pit two Chipzilla processors head on. An Intel® Pentium® D 920 overclocked to 4.5GHz goes head on against the new Intel® Core™ Duo T2600 overclocked to 3.1GHz. The results is pretty amazing and astounding. The newer processor with lesser clock and bus speed won six(6) out of eight(8) benchmark tests.

coolaler, use two enthusiast combo. The Intel® Pentium® D 920 is partnered with an Asus P5WGD2-WS Motherboard, and 2x512 DDR2 Corsair RAM while the Intel® Core™ Duo T2600 is running on an AOpen i975Xa-YDG and 2x512DDR2 Corsair RAM. Below is the outcome of the battle:

1.TMPEG3:INTEL Pentium D920@4.5G Win
2.WINRAR: Intel Core Duo T2600@3.1G Win
3.PTT to PDF: Intel Core Duo T2600@3.1G Win
4.CINEBENCH2003: Intel Core Duo T2600@3.1G Win
5.PERFORMANCE TEST 6.0: Intel Core Duo T2600@3.1G Win
6.Dual SUPERPI1M: Intel Core Duo T2600@3.1G Win
7.CPUMARK99: Intel Core Duo T2600@3.1G Win
8.Mem Benchmark:INTEL Pentium D920@4.5G Win

The thread can be seen at XS.

Overclock: Overclocking the Intel® Pentium® D 805 Processor (Dual Core for the Masses)

Due to insistent public demand, I finally manage to get down and dirty with this very attractively-priced processor. It is a first of its kind for the pricing and functionality of this processor. Those who have been holding back the transition to LGA775 and DDR2, this is the right time to jump over to the fence and feel the blessings of dual core.

Today users require the power of simultaneous computing found in a dual-core processor. The Intel® Pentium® D processor brings this power to the desktop. An Intel dual-core processor delivers consumer value by providing additional computing resources that expand the PC's capabilities and provide platform-level advancements for consumers in the form of higher throughput and simultaneous computing. With an Intel Pentium D processor users may perform multiple tasks such as digital rendering and gaming all while running virus scan or other background tasks seamlessly.. It has great features for digital home computing, such as support for EM64T to enable the system to address more than 4GB of system memory and advance security functionality thru Execute Disable Bit that can prevent certain classes of malicious "buffer overflow" attacks when combined with a supporting operating system.

Source:Overclocking the Intel® Pentium® D 805 Processor (Dual Core for the Masses)

Tech Link (Processor): Intel Dual-Core Gaming Performance Analysis

Someone beat me to doing a single-core versus dual-core gaming benchmark comparison. I am actually collecting and tabulating all the data that I have, I guess it's good as I can actually compare my own findings versus the one made by Neoseeker.

The article focus on Intel® Pentium® 4 and Intel® Pentium® D processors, having the same clock frequency and both overclocked to 4GHz. For video-card, both single-card and SLI-type will be pitted against each other, to find out how SLI performs under single-core and dual core platform. The line up of gaming benchmarks includes 3DMark06, DOOM 3, Call of Duty 2, F.E.A.R, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, and Serious Sam 2.

Unfortunately, using SLI means they have to forgo with Intel®-chipset-based motherboard since Intel® only official supports ATI's Crossfire on its i955-based and i975-based motherboard. Also, I would have preferred if they do actual experienced-based subjective testing, like having an anti-virus running on the background, downloading stuff off the net, sharing files to family members at the living room, and even have IM and also do stuff like distributed running on the background. In my opinion, this is where dual core really shines rather than waiting for games to take advantage of it, the user can already take advantage of it by doing multitude of tasks without being a geek and checking which applications he/she needs to close/turn off just to have smoother computing experience.

While it is true that in gaming, often times other applications has to be turned off to speed up loading, and remove bottleneck, but with the onslaught of more and more trojans, virus, and hackers, some background tasks can not just be turned off. Sure, a separate box or a router can do that, but with the rules of security, it never hurts to be paranoid and keep your system away from security breach.

So while the benchmarks are shown and analyzed in an objective manner, think beyond geek stuff and look at the consumer level type of usage. Then fit yourself in their shoes. Then do those benchmarks and compare the experience, whether gaming or just plain multi tasking with your OS.

Testing has shown that while dual-core and gaming can be a lucrative deal, it really only gets useful if the rest of your system is already powerful enough, and simply being held back by your current CPU. This means that your video card and memory subsystems have to be plenty fast -- in the order of SLI, we saw, if you've already got a fast CPU that you feel is holding you back. Even in the case of mostly single-threaded games (most of which are), Windows can offload its internal housekeeping and driver tasks to the second core, allowing your game to enjoy a minor performance bump on the first core that it would then have all to itself. When games start getting multi-threaded, a dual-core CPU will provide an even larger performance bump.

Source:NeoSeeker

Tech Link (Processor): Intel® Pentium® D 805 vs X2 3800+

I can not understand a word in there, but I think the graph is a good universal language. Seems like the cheaper and lower-rated Intel® Pentium® D 805 goes toe-to-toe with the more expensive Athlon64* X2 3800+. It just goes to show how crappy their performance rating is.

Anyway, I am still skeptical with the results. Not that it's a good bragging link for fanboys, but I haven't tested an Athlon64 X2 3800+. I am able to compare Athlon64 X2 4xxx+ against Intel® Celeron® D/Cedar Mill though and the results are promising, too bad, can't post it =). Anyway, the article is here and you will need a trusty translator to understand it.

Source:ZDNet

Tech Link (Processor): Intel® Pentium® Processor Extreme Edition 955 Reviews

Enjoy my uber fanboyism!!! Do note that when looking at the reviews, the "other camp" compared to this CPU is along the lines of 4xxx+ even X2 4xxx+. With Intel®, it's the Ghz, on the other camp, it's the PR. So if you're a fanboy (or just plain expert) of the other camp, the clock for clock comparison has been beaten to a pulp countless times, and only uber noobie fanboy compared clock for clock when it comes to Intel and the other camp: it's PR vs Ghz (i.e. back in AXP days, it's AXP 3200+ vs Pentium 4 3.2Ghz). If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're not fanboy enough. In any case, this article from Overclocker.Com might shake your jarred memory a bit (that goes for both you and me). And I will just quote it:

"For some reason, there's been some great desire to compare dual-core processors lately. There's a fairly poor one (spare me the Dick Clark pretending to be a teenager routine) here comparing Intel's and AMD's duallies, and a better one comparing a new Intel Yonah to the x2s.

In both cases, the real issue is somewhat to completely ignored.

In general, as a rule of thumb, an Intel Pentium IV design needs to have a MHz rating 50-60% greater than that of a Hammer design for roughly the same performance. In the case of duallies, it looks to be about 55%.

So a 2GHz Hammer works out to roughly a 3.1GHz PIV, and a 2.4GHz Hammer works out to about a 3.7GHz PIV.

In the CNet review, the AMD flagship 2.4GHz 4800+ was going against a 3.2GHz Extreme Edition (a PIV with more cache). That's a mismatch, and it should have come to no one's surprise that the AMD chip consistently won."

Anyway, feast yourselves on this news around the web, expand the article for the list:
Hexus

It's evident that multi-core CPU architecture is the way to go for both Intel and AMD. When evaluated with software that's multi-threaded, dual-core CPUs simply fly, Intel introduced its Pentium dual-core range in May of this year and it's taken seven months for a faster processor to topple the Extreme Edition 840 off its perch. The Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955, then, adds in a faster core speed allied to a faster FSB. Other improvements come in the form of a smaller manufacturing process and more L2 cache than has been seen on any consumer-level CPU to date; 4 MB, split over into 2MB over each core. Think of it as a pumped-up E.E. '840 and you won't be far off the mark.

XBitLabs

Pentium Extreme Edition 955 (Presler) processor we have reviewed today left a very favorable impression. Especially against the background of its less successful predecessor – Pentium Extreme Edition 840 based on the 90nm Smithfield core.

HotHardware

The Pentium Extreme Edition 955 processor performed well overall throughout our entire battery of benchmarks. Due to the processor's relatively high-clock speed, dual execution cores, HT technology and 1066MHz bus, the synthetic benchmarks, 3D rendering tests, and audio encoding tests ran best on the Pentium Extreme Edition 955 / D975XBX platform.

LegitReviews

To start things off I left everything alone and overclocking the processor by doing nothing, but increasing the front side bus (FSB) via the 0-30% overclock feature that is found in the Intel D975XBX motherboard BIOS settings. After start at 5% I was able to go all the way to 20% before the system became unstable. Using the stock heat sink, no extra voltage, and changing just one setting in the BIOS our processor got a solid 700MHz overclock. The FSB easily went from 266MHz all the way up to 320MHz with no extra voltage to the MCH, FSB, or processor. I was amazed by these results and wanted to know what it could do with a bit of tinkering on the voltages, multiplier, and with the help of water cooling.

PCPer

The Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 processor brings a new level of performance to Intel's desktop products and ups the ante on performance in heavily multi-tasked environments. The technology is mostly a repeat of what we have seen in Intel's Pentium line up before, but with a 1066 MHz FSB, 4 MB of L2 cache and 65nm technology, the Pentium 955 may really add to something greater than the sum of its parts.

Tom's

The latest Extreme Edition processor underscores the premise that manufacturing technology is what matters most in the processor business. 65 nm enables Intel to make up for the flaws in its current 90 nm portfolio and to deliver competitive products over the coming months.

NordicHardware

Pros:
+ Very good multitasking performance
+ More performance per clock cycle compared to the 800 series
+ Overclocking potential

Cons:
- Power consumption
- Most likely very expensive

We would like to thank Intel who sent the processor and mainboard for evaluation and Corsair for the memory for the test system

LostCircuits

Another clandestine release of another Intel flagship CPU during the last hours of the old year is unsettling the desktop world. Sporting the world's smallest transistors in an abundance of 376 million units, with 4 MB on-board L2 cache and a clock frequuency of 3.46 GHz, the new ExtremeEdition based on the Presler core is creating a bunch of new superlatives. Finally, there is an Intel processor again that can beat the AMD competition in gaming applications - and in 3dsmax - and last not least in Abbyy FineReader. But we are not really concerned about the latter too much.

Bit-Tech

Multi-Threaded games are starting to appear and it is a topic that needs to be explored in the future. At the last Intel Developer Forum, Wil noted that both F.E.A.R. and City of Villains were optimised for dual core processors. These have been joined by the recent release of dual core optimised patches for both Quake 4 and Call of Duty 2. We'll have to have a closer look at these games and also have a look at the dual core optimised graphics drivers from both ATI and NVIDIA in the new year. It's clear that games are heading in the dual-core direction - especially with the Xbox 360 and PS3 utilising multiple threads. Buying a dual-core processor is something of a no-brainer these days if you're looking to future proof your rig, and the 955 is clearly threaded to the max.

ViperLair

The Intel 975X should be a solid performer, and the new features should be enough that we can expect some really nice boards based on the chipset to make itself present this coming year.

FiringSquad

That’s not to say the release isn’t exciting. Faster frequencies, two large 2MB caches, the return of a 1,066 MHz front side bus, and Intel Virtualization Technology are but a few of the reasons affluent gamers will want to at least give this setup a look. The performance gains are very real, as they should be given this chip’s price. And if you’re solely comparing the Pentium Extreme Edition 840, Presler is unquestionably the better core.

Umm....I think that's it...now, where did I place mine?