Pentium D vs Athlon X2

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cdkiller

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its a fact that the 3800+ overkills the pentium D 920 by far, (except in some multimedia encoding) but i still have a few questions about the two. my biggest issue is power dissipation. i saw a benchmark with the pentium D vs the X2 and the power usage for the intels were about 40 watts higher on idle. however the site said that at that time the bios of their motherboards could not support intel speed step technology and thus the intels could have done better.

i am wondering if anybody knows of a site with proper benchmarks where all features of the cpus are enabled.

the next thing is that the X2 are more expensive than the 920. i am wondering if amd plans to use a smaller nm technology anytime soon and is it worth waiting for?

just by the way info, i am planning to make another gaming rig so any tips would also be appreciated. this time i want to do more research because my current rig runs on a prescott core. the prescott had now been released and i thought it was cool that the price was so low however i realised after that prescott is anything but cool. its the hottest running cpu i ever had. its an insult to electrical engineering, what a horrible thermal design.
 
cdkiller said:
i am wondering if amd plans to use a smaller nm technology anytime soon and is it worth waiting for?

They will be making the later AM2's 65nm from 90nm. As far as 939 X2's go, I haven't heard of such and doubt it.
 
65nm are due mid to late 2007 from AMD i believe. the lower the number the smaller the transistors on the processor are and the less heat produced. keep in mind the fact that i guarantee you AMD didn't have Cool n' Quiet enabled which is similar to Intel's speedstep. even with speedstep the AMD would still win in power consumptio/heat dump. especially as you consider that most of the time you use the pc speedstep/cool n' quiet won't even be in effect
 
hey alex, nm stands for nanometer and the explanation is basically what nitestick said.
I have been reading some other threads about the AM2. isn't that for servers? in any case i guess it does not make sence to wait till next year to make another rig. so another question is which X2 would you say is the best bang for the buck? also any suggestions as to which asus motherboard to use? oh by the way i was wondering if the X2 uses ddr or ddr2. oh and with regard to the motherboard i do not need any server features like raid etc. especially since i dont want to pay extra money for features i will never use. :)
 
i wouldn't reccomend any Asus s939 board. people keep telling me i shouldn't doubt them but i keep helping person after person having problems with their Asus boards. i reccomend the DFI LanParty series, probably the Ultra-D or if you really don't want to fork out for a LanParty at least an Infinity board. AM2 is not for servers although no doubt the Opteron will feature on it. out of the X2 range th 3800+ and 4400+ stand out for value. as you can see my 3800 is currently sitting at 2.6ghz (clock speed of the FX-60 but will perform slightly lower). no current AMD processors use DDR2, all use DDR.
 
A cheaper alternative to the DFI motherboards is the MSI K8N Neo4-F, it's a great board with a low price tag and enough overclocking features to get the job done.
 
so another question is which X2 would you say is the best bang for the buck?

Actually, the S939 Opterons are the best bet... especially if you want to overclock. All of the dual-core Optys have 2x1MB cache.

The Opty 165 is a fierce litle beast when you overclock it.
 
yea but the opterons lack stuff like 3dnow etc. is that correct? which would make them crappy gaming machines. i was doing some research on amd.com and i noticed that there are 2 of each model processor and the only difference seems to be in their stepping. the one i was looking at was the 3800+ X2 and this is what i noticed. there is something called Ordering P/N (Tray) and the ADA3800DAA5CD has a stepping value = E6 . the ADA3800DAA5BV version has a stepping value=E4. so now i am wondering if this stepping has something to do with the clock ratio and the ability of the cpu to be overclocked. the url is http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/desktop/SideBySide.aspx?opn=ADA3800DAA5CD&opn=ADA3800DAA5BV

does anybody know what the stepping value really mean, i know its been around very long but i have never seen anyone talk about it on the net.

also somebody recommended DFI over Asus. what are the complaints of others because i always buy Asus because of their top class engineering. i have not seen anyone have anything close to the 8-phase power system asus has which makes their boards produce less heat than others. also Asus uses high quality capacitors which dont crack under pressure. not to mention asus unleashed the hyperpath technology making i865 boards outperform i875, lol. way to show intel whose boss, lol. not that i am resistant to change to another brand but its important to me that i know why i would be changing over and what can i expect of the product quality etc.
 
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