Pentium 4 HT vs Pentium D vs Pentium Dual-Core

[imported_falacy]

Last christmas I replaced my Dell socket 478 motherboard and CPU (which is now a Kubuntu kid's computer - Kununtu is great for kids!) with a socket 775 upgrade that made the best of what I already had - 1GB of RAM (2x512 Kingston CAS 3 DDR 400) and my ATi 9800XT AGP video card. I purchased an ASRock 775i65G Rev. 2 and a Pentium 4 531 (3.0GHz 1MB L2 HT EM64T) with the intention to upgrade to a Core2 800MHz FSB model when they came out.

Now that I'm on my laptop most of the time and gaming has lost it apeal (apart from WoW, which is great on my laptop), the primary function of my desktop has become media encoding (xvid) and file sharing under Windows XP Home, I'd like to change my former gaming machine into a power-friendly file server. The computer is house in an old modified 486 AT server tower, so there is plenty of room to use all 7 of the ATA133 ports (4 on the motherboard, 4 on a Promise controler card) as well as the 2 SATA ports (that are already occupied by 160GB disks) and really go storage crazy over time - heck, I could even use my SCSI cards/drives! I have a couple IDE to CF adapters, so I'll likely be booting Windows from my 4GB 266x CF card and keeping the hard drives spun down unless they are in use. Unfornutately, none of my controls have RAID, but nothing is perfect. Anyhow, I need a new power supply any way, so I plan on spending more on a good power supply and UPS than on the CPU. As such, I'm very enticed by the Pentium Dual-Core E2140 and my big question is, for media encoding will it be any better than the Pentium 4 531 that I already have?

Anyone seen any reviews out there?

PS. I have no qualms with overclocking - I ran a Celeron 300a at 450MHz on an ABIT BH6 Motherboard for 3 years as my main computer

 

[AllWhacked]

You can compare here and check things out.

But in a nut shell:

P4HT < P4D < Pentium Dual Core < Core 2 Duo

Also the Pentium Dual Core are all Core 2 Duo processors, but with only 1MB cache. I guess intel named them that so that the low price wouldn't detract from the Core 2 Duo name.

In any case, given how cheap the chips are I would get an e4300 for $20 more over an e2160. The extra cache does make a difference in encoding. And given that you're using an ASrock board, it can only go up to 300FSB so your best overclocking would be with an e4x00 series chip.

 

[imported_falacy]

In Canada, the cheapest I have found the E2140 is $79.95 compaired to the E4400 for $145.95 (the E4300 is the same price as the E4400) and the E2160 for $109.95, so there is a considerable savings in going with the E2140.

We Canadians get dinged duty, taxes on the original price and taxes on the final price including shipping (taxed twice in my experience a few years ago...) when purchasing from online retailers in the USA, so it's completely not worth while shopping at them unfortunately. The best place in Canada to shop, in my experience, is Anitec.ca - nice people in the store and two handy locations in Burnaby that are well stocked (so you can actually walk in and buy something and they actually will have it there, unlike so many "big-box" retailers...). Also, they will ship via Canada Post (automaticly calculated shipping), which is much less expensive than the alternatives and not really any slower either.

More cache is better, more cash is not. I'll take a small performance hit to save $65 or put it toward a TV tuner... hmmm...

 

[Emulex]

celeron 420 = signle core , 512mg cache (core 2 solo i guess)
2140 = dual core, 1mb cache (core 2 duo)
4300 = dual core , 2mb cache (core 2 duo)
6xxx = dual core , 4mb cache?, intel VT (core 2 duo)

its actually easier to overclock with less cache since thats a majority of the heat.

google 2140 vs 4300 you'll find a doc showing how much loss you get between overclocking the 1mb,2mb, against a 6xxx core.

most (not all) 2140 and 4300's will easily hit 266fsb with no volts. Folks have gotten them up to 300+fsb with modern cooling and voltage.

if the 4300 is 5% faster (realistic) than the 2140 at the same clock but you can clock the 2140 5% more i spose you'd have about the same performance.

likewise with the 6xxx series, unless you are using server 2008 or vmware or something where hardware virtualization would further enhance performance but most of us that use hypervisor and virtualization don't muck with overclocking since crashing would just suck (times the # of os you have running lol).

 

[zach0624]

I would get the e4500 looking at NCIX it is only $160 CAD and will get 3ghz with its 11x multi at just 266mhz internal clock which is easily obtainable even with your board ( sounds like 300 tops).

 

[hans007]

e2140 will be faster for media encoding than a p4 just because its dual cores.

the pentium D might actually be faster than the e2140 for that since its clocked so much higher if you get a 945 or above since the e2140 only run sat 1.6 ghz.


a 3.6 pentium D 960 would probably be about equivalent to a e6300 in media encoding i think.

 

[imported_falacy]

I purchased a Pentium Dual Core E2160 (for $5 less than I paid for my Pentium 531 less than a year ago), so I'm going to run some benchmarks to compair the 531 to the E2160. I'll post my findings and specs here, for anyone else who might be hanging onto their AGP card and DDR RAM until we finally see what AMD has been upto!