Is a Pentium D 2.8 GHz considered fast ?

[VirtualLarry]

It's a relatively low powered chip too.

Pentium D? Low powered? Are we in the same universe? Anyone have any idea what the TDP is for these chips?

 

[v8envy]

Pentium D 820 was rated at only 95W TDP, as was the 2.66 ghz 805. The 3 ghz 830 was rated at 130 watts, same as the i7.

In reality they were all fireballs. The ratings were for "typical" use (read: light office word processing, I guess.) Fire up anything at all strenuous and your CPU goes from mid 40s at idle to low 90s and starts throttling. So while they were relatively low power (compared to an overclocked i7) they also reduced performance to meet those "low power" targets.

I would not delegate one to HTPC duty, that's for sure. And it's a bit too underpowered for modern gaming. It's contemporary and faster equivalent, the AMD 3800 x2 cost nearly twice as much for many good reasons.

 

[deimos3428]

I just was given a Dell E510 that has a Pentium D 2.8GHz processor. Is this processor considered fast or is it not worth putting any money into this computer. I wanted to install Windows 7 and some more ram, but not sure that its worth it if you say that the above processor is too obsolete.
Thanks

That technology is about 4 years old. Keep it, use it, but don't put (much) more money into it. Windows 7 and RAM seem like reasonable upgrades that you can reuse.

 

[Fox5]

The cpu was power hungry and slow even for its hey-day, it's pretty much on par with the slowest stuff you can buy now, while using as much power as the highest.

 

[Hey Zeus]

I still remember the video of someone frying an egg ontop of a Netburst Pentium 4

 

[betasub]

Mmm, fried egg <drool>

 

[exar333]

Fast for an office computer? Probably.

Fast for everyday use (web-browsing, movies, word-processing)? Sure.

Fast for older/not demanding games? Sure.

Fast for cutting-edge games and graphics/encoding? No, but it's maybe doable with a good GPU.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Well it's dual core and at one time was fastest chip around.

The Pentium D 820 was never the "fastest chip around", even if you took the bait and tried OCing the hell out of one on "cheap" water the way Tom's Hardware did in their infamous Pentium D flogging article.

Or was it the 805 they loved? I forget.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/dual-41-ghz-cores,1253.html <-- looks like the 805 was the one they lubbed.

Anyway, the 820 was a dog, but if you don't expect too much from it, it won't kill you. It's still faster than my mom's craptacular P4-era Celeron. 400 mhz FSB, hooray!

 

[TurtleCrusher]

As much of a fail the Pentium 4 was, Pentium D's really hold their own in older dual-threaded games. I used to get 20-30fps on TF2 w/ a P4 2.8ghz HT when the game was single threaded. I can imagine the P4 doing TF2 @ 40-60fps.

I was on the s939 bandwagon though (several 3500+'s, X2 4200+) and those were some fast processors for the money.

If you have the P4 laying around, it's good enough for everything. It is still pretty slow when it comes to flash and encoding.

 

[adlep]

The computer will be fine for just about anything, but don't expect it to perform well in newest 3D gaming titles.
For Sims3 or WoW it should be fine however with a decent ($70.00) graphics.
E510 are nice machines. Cooling is good, they use SATA hard drives and the entire case is roomy and easy to work with.
Also, bear in mind that this is Pentium D - meaning that it is a first generation of Intel's dual core CPUs.
Nothing spectacular, but it is still a nice PC.
Edit: I think that it may support a max of 1GB of DDR2 per slot for the total amount of 4GB. Throw in there a fast hard drive, and get a 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium. It will be a very nice machine.

 

[vshah]

Heya,

It's a dualcore and it's got a decent clock. It's a relatively low powered chip too. You could use it to make a HTPC or server easily. It can also power a Web/Casual machine for normal casual use like web surfing, documentation, photos, etc. I wouldn't use it for a modern gaming machine though.

Very best,

i doubt it could handle 1080p video. would need an add-in card.

 

[joutlaw]

I have the Pentium D 3Ghz on my work PC. It's painfully slow as my development box. Unfortunately I have no say on what PC I get. My manager's hands are tied because the director of our department says that all PCs have a 4 year lifecylce.

It was pretty good in it's day, but I've had this PC for 3 1/2 years and I'm in need of an upgrade desperately.

 

[Hey Zeus]

As much of a fail the Pentium 4 was, Pentium D's really hold their own in older dual-threaded games. I used to get 20-30fps on TF2 w/ a P4 2.8ghz HT when the game was single threaded. I can imagine the P4 doing TF2 @ 40-60fps.

I was on the s939 bandwagon though (several 3500+'s, X2 4200+) and those were some fast processors for the money.

If you have the P4 laying around, it's good enough for everything. It is still pretty slow when it comes to flash and encoding.

No they don't. Pentium 4's are garbage. There's a reason why Intel went back to the P3 and reworked it instead of using the P4

 

[RiDE]

I have a friend with this processor and he can't play 1080p vids smoothly. Is it really that bad?

 

[TJCS]

I have a friend with this processor and he can't play 1080p vids smoothly. Is it really that bad?

I had an Intel 840 Extreme Edition (it's a Pentium D with HT @3.2ghz), and 1080p playback was not smooth with cpu utilization at 50%~100%.

If I remembered correctly, HD playback used to be an CPU-only intensive process, and later video card manufacturers began to make GPUs that share the HD processing load.
​

 

[Rubycon]

I still remember the video of someone frying an egg ontop of a Netburst Pentium 4

Was it a new egg? :hmm:

 

[Arkaign]

No they don't. Pentium 4's are garbage. There's a reason why Intel went back to the P3 and reworked it instead of using the P4

Eh, I think this is somewhat of an overstatement.

Remember, the P4 traded blows with the Athlon XP handily (not at clock v clock, but 3ghz P4 vs. 3000+ for example), and was even relatively close to the Athlon 64 socket 754 performance.

OP, I tested Windows 7 on a 2.66Ghz Pentium D, the rest of the system was as follows :

Asus P5L-MX Mainboard (i945G)
2GB PC5300 Memory (2x1GB)
400GB 7200.10 Seagate HDD
Generic DVDRW, Case, 350W PSU, etc.

It ran just fine, booted pretty quick, ran office/IE/Firefox fine, could run several windows at once without taking a dump, and even played 720p mkv files (after installing CCCP, and with MPC-HT or MP11, VLC didn't work smoothly for some reason).

The reason that P4 got a bad rep was :

(1)- Hot! While the Northwoods weren't bad, the Prescott and above were really damned toasty. A 2.8 P-D isn't all that bad though. The 3.0ghz and above got progressively scarier though. I had to replace a couple of client 3.4Ghz Pentium D 945's that were under big Zalmans as they just weren't stable. That's unacceptable!

(2)- Price! Most of the time, until Athlon 64 really raised their ASP's, you could get equivalent or better performance with an AMD setup for the same or less money.

(3)- The rollout! The first-gen Willamette-core P4, with a paltry 256k L2 cache and low clock speeds (for Netburst arch) failed to really impress. It wasn't until the Northwood came with the die shrink and cache doubling that the bleeding edge folks really moved to it. Really until Athlon 64 dropped, an overclocked Northwood setup was about as fast as you could get, though there was crazy good value in overclocking certain Athlon XP models to 3200+ speeds or thereabouts.

EDIT :

(4)- RAMBUS! While it was really fast in the PC800 and PC1066 variants (for the time, faster than DDR266 or DDR333) .. it was WAAAAAY too expensive. Pretty much everyone hated RDRAM/RAMBUS, for good reason.

 

[ilkhan]

I dont think a P-D 2.8Ghz was considered fast when it was released...certainly not "fast" for the last 4 years.

 

[Lemon law]

My wife has an intel pentium D dual core, specifically the pressler core 915. It slightly out preformed my then similar system running a AMD X2 4000+ using the Brisbane core mainly because of a slightly higher clock rate and a much large cache.

And while its fine, speed wise for what my wife does, its been a headache since day one because of heat issues. Even at zero load it idles at 50C and any routine load takes it well above the intel set redline of 63.1C. We have had that damn furnace of a CPU for nearly two years now, I keep expecting it to melt any day, but it just keeps going while the worry is not worth it.

Due to motherboard failure, I have since gone to an E5200 system which idles at 37 C
and even fully loaded, using prime 95, it seldom ever goes over 50C under full sustained load. And the E5200 when compared to the her pentium D has a slower clock rate, a smaller cache, smaller cache, using the PC wizard overall system score, the E5200 scores 67&#37; higher. And yes, I have tried some mild overclocking of my E5200, and without increasing heat in any way, I can easily double her PC Wizard overall system score.

But our OP is in a strange situation, because he has a usable pentium D for free, so why not use it if he has no need for speed? But our OP has no hope clocking the pentium D unless our OP is willing to spend a bunch for a heat sink and fan, and might be wise to under clock it to control heat.

But if our OP wants and needs speed, those new 32 NM fabs are the way to go. And when he can get a E5200 for as little $50 new with careful shopping, its hard to say its all that much more expensive than free. Not having to worry about heat is almost priceless.

 

[Arkaign]

I dont think a P-D 2.8Ghz was considered fast when it was released...certainly not "fast" for the last 4 years.

No, it wasn't fast, but it was the value chip of the time Or rather, the Pentium D 805 was. AMD had the price premium with the Athlon 64 X2.

When it came out :

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/pentium-d-820/

"We reviewed the Athlon 64 X2 4200+ here just a few days ago. With the Pentium D 820 priced at less than half of what AMD's entry-level dual-core part is priced at, Intel could very well be responsible for initiating the dual-core push into the consumer home."

If you read through the benchmarks, the Pentium D was actually faster than the Athlon X2's in a number of benchmarks, particularly for encoding and general office apps. Gaming was solidly favoring the X2 though. But for half the price, what can you say? At the time of the Pentium D 800s hitting the market in 1H '05, this was the AMD pricelist :

Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2 GHz 512 KB $537
Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2.2 GHz 1 MB $581
Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 2.4 GHz 512 KB $803
Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 2.4 GHz 1 MB $1001

OUCH!

Anyway, either a Pentium D or Athlon X2 is still useful today, if someone already has the chip and mobo/ram/etc, as long it does what they need in a reasonable manner, they're okay. 'Fast' wouldn't apply, and if someone has the $ for even a budget build (Athlon II X2, C2D E5000/7000, etc .. a $50-$60 chip will blow the doors off the top-of-the-line from 4 years ago, and after overclocking will even game pretty well), I like to suggest that as a good option.

 

[Hey Zeus]

No, it wasn't fast, but it was the value chip of the time Or rather, the Pentium D 805 was. AMD had the price premium with the Athlon 64 X2.

When it came out :

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/pentium-d-820/

"We reviewed the Athlon 64 X2 4200+ here just a few days ago. With the Pentium D 820 priced at less than half of what AMD's entry-level dual-core part is priced at, Intel could very well be responsible for initiating the dual-core push into the consumer home."

If you read through the benchmarks, the Pentium D was actually faster than the Athlon X2's in a number of benchmarks, particularly for encoding and general office apps. Gaming was solidly favoring the X2 though. But for half the price, what can you say? At the time of the Pentium D 800s hitting the market in 1H '05, this was the AMD pricelist :

Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2 GHz 512 KB $537
Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2.2 GHz 1 MB $581
Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 2.4 GHz 512 KB $803
Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 2.4 GHz 1 MB $1001

OUCH!

Anyway, either a Pentium D or Athlon X2 is still useful today, if someone already has the chip and mobo/ram/etc, as long it does what they need in a reasonable manner, they're okay. 'Fast' wouldn't apply, and if someone has the $ for even a budget build (Athlon II X2, C2D E5000/7000, etc .. a $50-$60 chip will blow the doors off the top-of-the-line from 4 years ago, and after overclocking will even game pretty well), I like to suggest that as a good option.

HAHAHAHHAHAHAH At those prices

 

[Arkaign]

HAHAHAHHAHAHAH At those prices

Yeah didn't that suck? I remember at the time I was just like 'Dammit, I'm sticking with my trusty single-core until this nonsense is sorted out!'. Prices really didn't tumble to earth until shortly after C2D dropped, then the ~$100ish Athlon X2 became a reality at long last.

 

[taltamir]

OP, the CPU is still usable today, but it is a 4 year chip that was mediocre at launch. It is not going to be fast, and it is not worth putting money into... that being said, if you are pressed for funds some very cheap upgrades (10 to 15 for used ram / gpu on ebay) could do wonders for that system.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah didn't that suck? I remember at the time I was just like 'Dammit, I'm sticking with my trusty single-core until this nonsense is sorted out!'. Prices really didn't tumble to earth until shortly after C2D dropped, then the ~$100ish Athlon X2 became a reality at long last.

This is the price-cutting, with the C2Ds, that the FTC has complained about, at least in part.