How does Pentium D compare to Athlon X2 for non-gaming applications?

[croak]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
You also forget about the extra power required to COOL the house in the summer months, and the irritation of a hotter PC, and the extra heat can damage other components in the PC. Not to mention, you still have a slower PC. And for a good OC, you need a bigger heatsink than a 3800 X2 requires. Nobody yet has been able to refute any of this, other than they just call me a fanboy, or say they can;t afford a 3800. The extra power required and the the $$$ refutes that argument also.

What are you asking people to refute? That the Pent D 805 is faster? It's not. That's it doesn't generate more heat? It does. That it takes more power? It does. That it's a cheaper option, at least initially? Well it is..

 

[Markfw]

Yes, once you add up the costs, its more exspensive, and its still slower. Maybe it takes a few months, or maybe kids that make their parents pay for the electric , but its NOT a good value, even considering initial cost.

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
Yes, once you add up the costs, its more exspensive, and its still slower. Maybe it takes a few months, or maybe kids that make their parents pay for the electric , but its NOT a good value, even considering initial cost.

You realize that in Seattle, given 24/7 usage (at which half is load), it would take about 2 years for the price difference in electricity to make the 805 even to the 3800+ in price?

 

[NaOH]

.......why are we still discussing the power consumption.... We could very well be debating about which brand light bulbs (nonflourescent) are more efficient at this rate. Energy cost between these two should be ignored, because it is meaningless. In reality, who is going to buy a CPU based on power consumption COSTS. Who is going to go, "Oh SH*T I shouldve gone AMD!" 6 months after buying a CPU...

 

[DrMrLordX]

Originally posted by: dexvx

You realize that in Seattle, given 24/7 usage (at which half is load), it would take about 2 years for the price difference in electricity to make the 805 even to the 3800+ in price?

Of course I do. Hell, 2 years is nothing. I'm personally on a 4-year upgrade schedule to keep computer expenditures down. If my financial situation improves, that will change, but so will my budget-range for processors.

Anyone in the market for a bang/buck processor is going to want to hold on to their processor for an extended period of time. The 805 is not a CPU I'd want to own for 2+ years considering how it sucks up power and pumps out heat. I'd rather have a low-end Yonah or something.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Originally posted by: AMDUALY
.......why are we still discussing the power consumption.... We could very well be debating about which brand light bulbs (nonflourescent) are more efficient at this rate. Energy cost between these two should be ignored, because it is meaningless. In reality, who is going to buy a CPU based on power consumption COSTS. Who is going to go, "Oh SH*T I shouldve gone AMD!" 6 months after buying a CPU...

It isn't meaningless, and yes, people should actually think about how often and which sort of bulbs they use. However, this isn't the forum in which to do that.

Energy cost should not be ignored when the slower CPU chews up more energy. The low price is deceptive. And many people who wound up with 820s did, in fact, say "I should've gone AMD!" 6 months after buying their CPUs. Of course, anyone getting an 805 now will be saying "I should've waited for Yonah/Conroe!" instead . . .

 

[NaOH]

So you are saying two different brands (remember I said nonfluorescent) of the same output consume significantly different amounts of power for you to choose? Do you know how long it even takes for an upgrade to light ballasts and type of bulb to pay off the initial cost? Unless you use your lights A LOT like an industrial plant, then you will see more significant changes in cost. If someone had enough money to buy an AMD x2 then more power to them. But if they don't have the money or capacity to let themselves spend that much money upfront, they can op for the latter which is more than $100 less. Then everyday if they run their systems 24x7 with 12 hours on load then it'd be what, $5dollars more a month than AMD? You know how insignificant that is? Especially if they only use that PC for general use it will not make a huge impact. The OP says, what is the difference in ripping, encoding, multimedia ish. Does it sound like he is going to run some sort of a server to leave his desktop on all the time? He can save money by turning it off if and when he goes to work.

 

[dexvx]

Oh god, its how different people operate. Some people hate paying upfront and slowly getting their investment back whereas other people are the opposite.

Although in all seriousness, if you are that concerned about power, you should just get a laptop, like the Inspiron 9300 (or whatever the new one with Core Duo is).

 

[NaOH]

Originally posted by: dexvx
Oh god, its how different people operate. Some people hate paying upfront and slowly getting their investment back whereas other people are the opposite.

Although in all seriousness, if you are that concerned about power, you should just get a laptop, like the Inspiron 9300 (or whatever the new one with Core Duo is).

Exactly, you guys are arguing this with a view of him pushing his processor to the max and running it 24x7. He could be like my friends who are power users, but also just run their rig bone stock and are fine with it. And he could be money conscious (as in hates putting a lot of money down at once, that's why they have credit cards people). From this view, the Pentium would be a better choice cause I bet the performance increase might not be worth it for HIM to shell out.

I don't disagree that the 805 consumes more, wastes more power (heat dissipation) and is slower. But I do think it is a cheap alternative, if you can get a cheap mobo that is.

 

[vetteguy]

What's so great about the Yonah? Everyone's down on the Pentium D for being so much slower, but that thing's only 1.6GHz...I had a processor that fast 5 years ago. Oh well, must be missing something. In any case, I don't think I'm doing anything now. Am happy with my 3.4, and really have no desire to buy an AMD (I've had several and they always ran way hotter than anything Intel I had)

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: vetteguy
What's so great about the Yonah? Everyone's down on the Pentium D for being so much slower, but that thing's only 1.6GHz...I had a processor that fast 5 years ago. Oh well, must be missing something. In any case, I don't think I'm doing anything now. Am happy with my 3.4, and really have no desire to buy an AMD (I've had several and they always ran way hotter than anything Intel I had)

Well, until The Conroe comes, the Intel's are the ones that run hotter today. Yonah appears OH, but being laptop, its not really in this discussion.

So bottom line ? You want Cool ? AMD You want performance (today) ? AMD you want value ? AMD You want cheap slow hot crap ? Intel (805)

 

[DrMrLordX]

Mark, Aopen has a solid 975-based board coming out for Yonah in mid-March. No idea what it'll cost once it goes into wide release. Nevertheless, Yonah is a desktop option.

vetteguy, in may tasks, Yonah is on-par with 512k l2-cache X2s clock per clock. It uses even less power than the X2. And the 1.67 ghz Yonah will match or beat an 805 at 2.66 ghz, I can almost guarentee it. You could also overclock the Yonah(a few overclockers have already messed with it and hit 2.6-2.7 ghz easily) and still expect low power consumption from the chip. I think the X2 still wins in some tasks(encoding), but in other apps, the Yonah hangs tough. I brought up Yonah to try and shift this argument away from being another "AMD vs Intel" fest.

Furthermore, to address the issue of usage habits, I would like to point out that I am not panning the 805 as being a bad deal ONLY for 24/7 users. People who only keep their system running at load from time to time will still experience higher power bills. That $3/month, $36/year figure I cited was not applicable to "power users" but "average users". I consider myself to be an average user, and I know that, down the line, an 805 would cost me money even though I do turn my computer off for significant periods of time. That, and in case you hadn't noticed, electric rates are going up just about everywhere. Ugh.

The point of my, and Mark's, posting is to try and cast Smithfield in the light it deserves to be cast: a long-term waste of money. Intel has good, efficient designs out, and some of them are pretty cheap. For what you get, the 1.67 ghz Yonah would be a fine desktop CPU and would probably be one hell of an overclocker provided the board had sufficiently high FSB settings. The E6300 Conroe is also looking like a winner for future machines.

 

[Markfw]

I don't know much about Yonah, but it certainly looks promising. I only speak about things I know well, and the 805 is crap as pointed out.

 

[openwheelformula1]

Aopen Yonah board: too expensive. Knowing 965 is right around the corner, I would skp Yonah for now.

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: blckgrffn
Does anyone know the power usage on the 805? Based on temps that I have personally seen (32C idle, 45C load with stock heatsink) I think power consumption may be lower.

Appears to still be 95W...

Would that be idle or load? Seems like that could be idle... I wish AT would take a look at this little processor and give us the low down on power consumption and motherboard compatibility...

Nat

the power usage of an 805 at stock levels would be fairyl low, probably comparable to a 3800 at stock. the 90nm proces intel used, leaks exponentially more the higher you go, that is why an 840 uses up like 50% more power than a 820 even though its only 400mhz faster..



also for you crackheads talking about the electricity bill issue.


who the hell runs their cpu at full load the entire month. if you take a 3800 or an 805 and run them at stock at load all month, i figure the power difference for the entire system are mabye 40 watts at best if even that everything else in the system being the same.


if you are paying say 8-9 cents per kw/ hour even if your 2 cores were chugging prime 95 x2 all month.

it works out something like 24 x 30 x 1000w/hr x 8.5 cents * .04 (40 watts) its like $2.44.

and that is with the 40 watt estimate which is pretty liberal. the 2.66 at stock, is not very high power, as the leakage at that point is not even that hot. a prescott E-step 2.8 is a very cool running chip and these are just 2 of those running at a lower speed.

so that said its probably more like 30 watts, not to mention you probably arent running 2 instances of prime 95 ALL MONTH.

so... $2.44 a month and that is at full load. i mean is this the type of arguments amd fans come up with? i mean performance per $ is pretty good.


as for the "cooling your house" argument. that is absolute idiocy. we are not talking about a datacenter. it can just as easily be said that the miniscule difference in heat output that would need to be cooled would save you money in heat in the winter. and that too is a similary idiotic argument.

i mean really.. to the total intel bashers here, sure it is not a good cpu at $500 and 3.2ghz. but at $135 and 2.66ghz give it some credit for god sakes.

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: hans007
as for the "cooling your house" argument. that is absolute idiocy. we are not talking about a datacenter. it can just as easily be said that the miniscule difference in heat output that would need to be cooled would save you money in heat in the winter. and that too is a similary idiotic argument.

Thats kinda funny.

 

[Ninjaneer]

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
Energy cost should not be ignored when the slower CPU chews up more energy. The low price is deceptive. And many people who wound up with 820s did, in fact, say "I should've gone AMD!" 6 months after buying their CPUs. Of course, anyone getting an 805 now will be saying "I should've waited for Yonah/Conroe!" instead . . .

Then they'll say, "but I only paid $135 for this thing. I would have had to save for a long time to get the $270+ it'll cost me for a Yonah/Conroe."

But the time we could afford a Yonah or Conroe, we'll be saying, "why did I buy this POS, I should just wait for <insert next gen here>". Staying ahead of the upgrade path is like swimming against a current. You might make it to the front, but you're eventually gonna get pushed back and get tired out awfully quick.

 

[Caelum]

read both the threads on this, and they're both an interesting flame-fest

and after reading the threads, i've still decided that an 805 is the better option for me, while i put my sempron 2800+(754) into retirement as a file-server(it'll run at stock speeds on less than 1.2volts )

why? cheap Dual core - in order for me to get the same in amd, i'd have to get an X2 3800... ok, it'd perform better, run cooler, and(a bloody stupid statement) be cheaper to run than the PD, the pure VALUE of the purchase is much better...

i'm getting a PD 805 for $210 australian, about $150 US, and can get a gig of ddr2 for $90 aus, about 65-70 USD...

bundle in a decent motherboard, in this case a Asus P5ND2-SLI, for $170AU - 130USD, and i've got the guts of a new system for $470 australian, or about $350 american...

the cheapest i could do with AMD, was about $20 more, and that was using a athlon64 3200+, in socket 754....

so now, take your pick between those two, a 3200+, which i might be able to clock to what, 2.4-2.6? or a PD805, which should be easier to overclock, as it wont even be looking at coming close to the 800MHz fsb (infact 1066MHz on that p5nd2-sli) the motherboard would use..


heat? cost of power? come now, where i am in australia, its never hotter than 30 degrees C in summer anyway, and power is fairly cheap, at 14c/KW(10.5c US) at the highest peak time/price, so that kinda throws that argument out the window. even moreso that i'll be considering my next upgrade to happen within about a year or so anyway - with AM2 and conroe coming out, you'd be crazy to do any big upgrades right about now, in my opinion

 

[Ninjaneer]

My problem is...would going from an AthlonXP 2600+ to an Intel 805 be a worthwhile upgrade. I've done some research and found that there are some boards (got my eye on an Asus) which support the 805 and let me keep my AGP and 2 GB of DDR memory. Would I be wasting my time and money? Thanks.

 

[NaOH]

What video card do you currently have?

If I upgraded at this point in time, I would get a solution that supports PCIe. That way my mobo would last longer. But if you can't justify the costs to yourself to buy a new graphics card and mobo or aren't looking to upgrade your video card very often or don't really play games. Then I guess it's fine.

 

[Caelum]

IMO - yep, i think its worthwhile...

the 805 is a dirt cheap entry into Dual Core, and while it wont perform equally to the AMD entry Dual Core solution - it was never meant to.

but, this is only my opinion

 

[Ninjaneer]

Originally posted by: AMDUALY
What video card do you currently have?

If I upgraded at this point in time, I would get a solution that supports PCIe. That way my mobo would last longer. But if you can't justify the costs to yourself to buy a new graphics card and mobo or aren't looking to upgrade your video card very often or don't really play games. Then I guess it's fine.

I have a BBA Radeon X800XL right now and I dont' think a new vid card purchase would be in my near-term future.

 

[DarkKnight69]

Originally posted by: AMDUALY
What are your load and idle temps?

I run an 840D at 3.85Ghz (Prime Stable 24 hours2 instances) and it runs about 60degrees under load and idles around 45 degrees.

I have a Acrtic Cooler Freezer 7 Pro!

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
In Photoshop, a Pentium D 820 is faster than an X2 4800+ by quite a margin.

Can you show me some references on this please? From what I recall, the performance differences were not so large. Morever, the following shows the opposite, where the only Pentium D to beat even a 3800+ in Photoshop was a 950.

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=pd900&page=10