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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peternelson - Sunday, April 9, 2006 - link
Thanks Jack, that PCN was exactly what I needed.
I had previously looked through the Intel site but not found it myself.
Given that the physical changes were only "add 10 resistors and 2 capacitors", I wonder whether Gigabyte, Asus etc al will be modding their 975 board. Heard rumours about Asus but that their new ones won't be shipping until July? No news on Gigabyte.
Viditor - Sunday, April 9, 2006 - link
Great info...thanks Jack!xxtypersxx - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link
Well I am running an opteron 165 @2.6 ghz on a 1.45vcore, and I'd say its definately worth it. And that information is blatantly wrong, as the 3800+ runs at 1.8ghz stock, same as the 165
JarredWalton - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link
No, the X2 4200+ is a 2.2 GHz 512K part, the 3800+ is a 2.0 GHz 512K part, and the Opteron 170 is also a 2.0 GHz part but with 1024K. The 165 is definitely 200 MHz slower than the X2 3800+. Now, as for your quote, finish the paragraph:(Overclocking makes things a bit more interesting, naturally.)
This is not an overclocking article, and if you're not going to overclock then there is absolutely no reason to spend $20 more for the Opteron 165 only to get slightly slower performance. The added cache gives a 3-5% performance boost at the same clock speed; the added 200 MHz accounts for an 11% performance boost in CPU power. It's not too difficult to see which is larger.
That said, I have two X2 3800+ chips and an Opteron 165. The X2 chips hit 2.60 GHz, and the Opteron 165 hits about the same speed. The retail Opteron HSF is definitely better, but for serious overclocking you'd probably want to spend another $50 on an aftermarket HSF anyway. Is the Opteron 165 a bad purchase? No. It's also not the greatest thing ever to hit the planet. If I were to rate the X2 3800+ vs. the Opty 165, I have to call it a tie. Both are great chips, both overclock well, and both reach very near the same final performance levels in my experience.
Kougar - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link
I've really been wanting a good definite article on ALL of these proccessors! Thank you very much! This is so handy to have as a reference when people want to know what to go with for what application/purpose. I am very much looking forward to that overclocking article, it'd be very neat to see all of these processors in it ;) Can finally see how much of the hype about Opterons is grounded in fact!When prices on both the 800 and 900 series plummet to next to NOTHING within several months for Conroe (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=1619">LINK), this will be handy to know. Hopefully AMD will focus on fully converting over to 300mm and 65nm processes quickly to help lower their marginal costs and therefore their own retail prices.
I did think it was rather sad to see the day when a Celeron D was fairly competetive or outright winning against a Athlon 64 3000+ though, excluding games... Guess that was just me!
artifex - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link
Please include Mersenne Prime and/or distributed.net keycracking in your testing suite :)No, seriously, each has short benchmarks to run. And these "temporary" machines will need something to do after we all upgrade again in a few months.
Googer - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link
I thought Conroe was going to run only on a 975 Chipset and early chipsets produced by Intel has a design mistake that needed to be reivised. So early spec 975 motherboards were indended to run conroe but will not, you will need a revion 2 board/chipset.
JarredWalton - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link
We're not saying you can upgrade from 805 to Conroe with the same motherboard. We're saying that for about $230 you can get a reasonable socket 775 motherboard and a PD 805 and it should handle all of your multithreaded computing needs until the AM2/Conroe launches.975X support for Conroe is still a bit unknown - I'm not sure if early 975X boards will work, and I don't even know that all current 975X boards will work. 945 *won't* work as far as I know, as 965 will be the "value" platform for Conroe processors.
hoppa - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link
I was very tempted until I saw those power ratings.... yikes.kyparrish - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link
This is the kind of article we all love reading, one that's well-detailed and concise.