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Intel Pentium D 840 Dual-Core LGA775 Processor Review
Intel Pentium D 840 Dual-Core LGA775 Processor Review - PCSTATS
This 90nm processor uses a pair of Prescott cores running at 3.2GHz to bring multi-processing to the desktop in a LGA775 pinless package.
 79% Rating:   
Filed under: CPU / Processors Published:  Author: 
External Mfg. Website: Intel Aug 17 2005   M. Dowler  
Home > Reviews > CPU / Processors > Intel Pentium D 840

Intel's dual-core Workhorse

The Intel Pentium D 840 performed well in the office and rendering benchmarks, but comparatively less so on the pure number crunching and gaming tests. Any benchmark that involved multi-threading or multitasking allowed the processor to flex its muscles, increasing scores considerably over its single-core equivalent.

We were pleasantly surprised to get an 820MHz overclock out of the Intel Pentium D 840 on air cooling. Given that the processor is using a brand-new chipset for testing, this is not bad at all.

In some respects, pitting the Intel Pentium D 840 against the AMD Athlon64 X2 4800+ is not a fair match up. While both processors are at the top of their respective lines, the Athlon64 X2 4800+ costs almost double the price of the Intel CPU. It's not surprising that the AMD dual-core chip is faster at gaming and mathematical operations either, since single-core Athlon64 processors enjoy the same advantages over Intel Pentium 4 chips.

It comes down to economics in the end. For a business that needs multi-tasking, multi-threading capabilities, the Pentium D 840 may be the better buy where sheer cost is the primary concern. For an application that needs maximum single and dual-core performance regardless of costs, the AMD Athlon64 X2 4800+ comes out on top. For the home user that just wants to play games fast, neither processor is ideal, one being too pricey, the other slower than comparably priced single-core chips.

One interesting fact we noted with both Intel and AMD dual-core processors is that the amount of reported memory bandwidth was lower than their single-core equivalents. We'd hypothesize that this is because of the inherent overhead of communication between the two cores on the die. The Intel Pentium D 840 also needs to use the FSB to transfer data between cores, so this would be an obvious possible area of slowdown. Of course, it could also be that the 955X Express platform we tested the Pentium D 840 on is still immature. The effect of internal memory speed on Pentium D performance is quite noticeable, as we mentioned earlier in the review.

The Intel Pentium D 840 has taught us one now-indisputable fact about the nature of dual-core CPUs: Just because it has two cores doesn't mean it's going to be faster at everything... But now we're being unreasonable.

The Intel Pentium D 840 behaved exactly as you would expect a processor made of two standard 3.2GHz Prescott Pentium 4 cores to do. It excelled on any and all benchmarks which involved multi-tasking or multi-threading, and otherwise performed exactly like a single-core Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz processor.

Given that Intel has not priced the Pentium D line of processors above faster single core chips, loyal Intel users are faced with a fairly simple choice: If the things that you do with your computer everyday involve multi-tasking or multi-threaded applications, a dual-core Pentium D processor will give you the most bang for your buck. If you primarily play games, do not engage in heavy multi-tasking or do not use multi-threaded applications, a single-core Pentium 4 processor clocked faster than 3.2GHz will give you better performance every time.

Find out about this and many other reviews by joining the Weekly PCstats.com Newsletter today! Once again, PCSTATS would like to thank Ivan Woo of DAIWA Distribution for helping to facilitate this review.

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1. Intel Pentium 4 3.2E GHz Prescott Processor Review
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3. Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz-C 800MHz FSB Processor Review
4. Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz 800MHZ FSB Processor Review
5. AMD Athlon64 4000+ processor review
6. AMD Athlon64 3800+ processor review

< Previous Page © 2023 PCSTATS.com CPU / Processors Reviews...»

 

Contents of Article: Intel Pentium D 840
 Pg 1.  Intel Pentium D 840 Dual-Core LGA775 Processor Review
 Pg 2.  State of the art CPU
 Pg 3.  Intel's Dual Core Technology
 Pg 4.  Intel 955X Express Chipset
 Pg 5.  Intel 945P/G chipset
 Pg 6.  Intel E7230 Server Core Logic
 Pg 7.  Pinless LGA775 Package
 Pg 8.  Overclocking Intel's new dual-core processor
 Pg 9.  Benchmarks: SysMark 2004
 Pg 10.  Benchmarks: Winstone 2004, Cinebench 2003
 Pg 11.  Benchmarks: Cinebench 2003 64-bit, Maya
 Pg 12.  Benchmarks: ScienceMark 2.0 in 32-bit and 64-bit
 Pg 13.  Benchmarks: SuperPI, Hexus piFast
 Pg 14.  Benchmarks: Sandra 2005, POVray
 Pg 15.  Benchmarks: PCMark04, PCMark05
 Pg 16.  Benchmarks: 3DMark2001, 3DMark05
 Pg 17.  Benchmarks: Comanche 4, UT2003
 Pg 18.  Benchmarks: UT2004, Doom3
 Pg 19.  — Intel's dual-core Workhorse

 
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