Hello guys, I've got my eye on Pentium D 805 and.... and.... you know it's a Pentium. I'm still really amazed by its overclockability and $100 price. Tom's hardware and many people had great success overclocking it (from 2.8 to 3.3 on stock air, up to 4GHz on water) I wondered if you have had any experiences with this processor, maybe some of you have on, or tested one. Is it really that good of a deal? Do you think its a good deal, or should I go AM-2 way.... not the 2-ways that would sound too... ahhh came out all gay I have around ~$900 and wanted a system, mostly for Video editing, some Gaming. If you have any good suggestions please write on. Thanks
The problem is that you will NOT find a dual core chip at that price, except maybe clearout 939'ers after conroe launches. For video encoding, the second core will help, but the wee FSB will massively hurt. I say spur for a 930 at the very least
I wouldnt spur for the 930. Just overclock the 805 for the fun of it; it should deliver a fair amount of performance without a fair amount of spent cash - aside from the motherboards of course
To Spur or not to Spur.... That is the question... LOL Had to look up what Spur means. Hmmm I would not go 939, I'd then go 940. I've never bought a Pentium CPU, and I'm quite an AMD fanboy but just look at these figures from TomsHardware tests: (I added the prices) Full "Tom's Hardware Article:" Link Although this only shows one tests results page, in most games and video editing/etc. tests 805 held similar ranks amongst some 3x priced CPU's This is a really big dilemma for me because the temptation of easy overclock (no Voltage changes, stock fan up to 3.3GHz) and saving few hundreds bucks is pretty strong. The AMD side of me is shouting WTF INTEL?! but what can it say when AMD cpu's next to this INtel Freak child 805 are so expensive. Give me some reasons why I should buy socket 939 or 940.
I would have got 4.00GHz at 1.40V but the motherboard has Vdroop issues, so I had to settle for 3.90 @ 1.375V. That's with water though. I think you're pretty much bound to get 3.3GHz out of this chip, probably 3.6GHz. Definately good value! Also, if you buy a mobo with Conroe support, you can always upgrade 6 months down the line if your $100 isn't up to running your apps. ch424
it is intel's little gem, like AMD's optron 144. they just clock like crazy. but to make the most you better buy some top notch memory to overclock it and thats not cheap!
Erm, you don't need too good of memory - just some solid DDR2-667, or low latency 800 if your board will do it.
Im actually considering a 805 with 965mobo combo as a pre-conroe purchase, but the E6300 @ £150 is looking mighty attractive.
So things are looking this way: I have HDD's and 500W PSU so that's not on a list. Also around 100 more on keyboards and such small things. Please suggest good motherboards and good air cooling solutions. Thanks
I've got a D805 running at 4.2 Ghz with watercooling and I'm very pleased with it. However, I picked an expensive motherboard and RAM, so it wasn't a super cheap option, but obviously I saved a fair amount on the top of the line processors from Intel and AMD. I also already had a watercooling set up and it only cost around £15.00 to adapt my existing waterblocks to fit the Intel CPU and motherboard. I wrote more about it in these threads: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=112817 http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=113118
Could you talk more about that. I'm quite a noob. Also thanks webchimp for the links, some great info there.
Please tell me pluses and minuses of both systems, which one would you choose and why, and give suggestions. Also vote in a poll. Thanks a lot! Please be specific (say the model of the motherboard for example)
The Pentium D will be faster, but there aren't (AFAIK) any decent guaranteed Conroe-compatible motherboards out at the moment. If you're considering an upgrade path as well as current performance then I'd go for the AM2. If you're just looking for a quick rig to have a blast with then the Pentium would be a better choice.
Well actually I think upgrading is kinda a just a bunch of bull anyways. You spend money to upgrade when with only few more hundred bucks you get a whole new system. In my case it is much better because then the older PC goes to my parentsl... then that PC goes to as Media Center/backup... and so on. With each upgrade the oldest system (right now a PIII 600MHz) gets thrown out, and everyone gets a faster and better PC than their previous one. So if I'll upgrade, I'll most likely get a new PC. (except maybe add more Ram) I'd probably expect 2 years out of the system I am building. Especially since sockets change faster than some people change their socks. By the time I'd need to upgrade AM-2 system (if I'd buy one), there would probably be a new socket, or at least major improvement or added features which would make it better to change whole system. In 2 years I had my Barton 2800+ Socket A, 754, 939, 940, and now AM2. THis is the main reason I don't look into upgrading CPU's. Do you think I'm stupid? Crazy? Cheap? Please let us know. =) Bit-tech forums, where difference between a geek and a nerd can cost you IP ban.
No I think that's a fair point. I generally look to have a system last around 2 to 3 years and a lot can change in that time in terms of CPU sockets, RAM standards/types etc. I generally move the old components into something else as well. If you upgrade your PC more frequently than every 2 years or so, I think you can spend a lot of money for fairly modest increases in overall performance and it becomes rather unecconomical.
Well I bought the 805 because its a cheap upgrade to dual core and I can overclock it easily. I overclocked mine to a stable 3.8GHz on air cooling using the HUGE Zalman heatsink but then I proceded to drop it to 3.7Ghz because of my room staying nice and toasty in the summer. I have never really had any problems overclocking. My mobo is a P4N Diamond and has the ability to support high fsb speeds like 1066MHz. So overclocking on this board was a breeze. When I benched @ 3.6GHz on Sisoft Sandra it compared to the performance of a Athlon X2 4400+ and at 3.8 it was comparing to a Athlon X2 4600+. If you can go water cooling and get up there in the 4.0GHz you'll have one of the fastest proc.s on your hand. Do note that some games are sensitive to overclocking. But honestly I don't have that many problems and most have to do with the game itself and not overclocking, but then again overclocking doesnt help . But oh well, If you want to deal with getting your overclock to an acceptable level and are willing to put in some effort to tweak like crazy, then this proc. is a deal and a half. Though if you dont want to deal with it then fork out some more money and get you something thats is just as fast and easier to deal with.
The only time that I've seen a game be 'sensitive' to overclocking is if the overclock isn't stable anyways - most of the time if Prime isn't working correctly, you could have issues in other stuff as well as general instability. That being said, I have an 805D @ 4.2GHz, and it's an incredible processor. I picked it up around the same time the Tomshardware article came out, for a media center/file server... and ended up overclocking it and using it as my main rig . I've currently bumped my Opteron 165 down to that role...
On overclockers, there are 2 asus mobos and a DFi board that are guaranteed to be compatible with Conroe, but im not sure if they are good boards.
