• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Pentium D 930 vs C2D

almoststew1990

almoststew1990

almoststew1990

Soldato
Joined
12 May 2011
Posts
6,335
Location
Southampton
I've got a Socket 775 board with a SIS 671 chipset. It is limited to these CPUS, and as it is a motherboard from a HP PC (even if it is manufactured by Gigabyte) I am taking that list with a pinch of salt.

At the moment it has a Pentium D 930 (3GHz dual core, 800MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache at 95watts). I can get a range of C2D CPUs for less than a fiver, but the E6xxx and 4xxx series are all significantly lower in clock speeds. Would it be a downgrade?

This is for a 'tinkering' PC that I do benchmarking on and play XP games so I know it's a "pointless upgrade". This is paired with a GTS240 (a rebaged 9800GT).
 
Any of the E6xxx series will be a huge upgrade the Pentium D were really lack lustre - even at 5GHz they couldn't challenge a much slower Core 2 Duo. Also if overclocking is a possibility most C2Ds will do a 25% overclock easy without even touching the voltage in most cases - the E6600 board limitations aside for instance will do 3.1GHz +/- 50Mhz before you need to touch the voltage. (In most cases they are pretty much bullet proof as well - I've had multiple E6600 and a couple of Q6600 that have run at 3.825 or 4GHz most of their life on high voltage and are still functional today).
 
When Core2Duo came out it was literally a game changer and made Intel worth buying again. Any C2D cpu is going to be better than a Pentium plus they overclock like demons. My first was a E4300 that easily overclocked to 3.6Ghz which was replaced by a E6600 (original one not the Pentium) that would hit 3.8Ghz but I ran it at 3.6Ghz day to day. I also had a Pentium E2160 that overclocked to 3.6Ghz (double it's stock speed!!) and a Q6600 that clocked to 3.6Ghz. I am not sure how good that board of yours will be for overclocking though as the SIS chipsets tended to be the low end.
 
A Core2Duo E6400 at stock 2.13GHz kicks a Pentium D 950 at 3.4GHz's arse. It uses half the power and does much more work per clock cycle then the older Pentium.

That's before you start overclocking them...
 
Thanks everyone. I'll go for the E4600 (which is £2.95 delivered!) as this has an 800MHz FSB like my current CPU - not sure 1066MHz will be supported by the board even if the chipset supports it, and there is no motherboard support page to check (or download later BIOS). I doubt I will have many overclocking options on this OEM board. I might run a few benchmarks on the Pentium D first...
 
Why stop at c2d, you can drop a quad core in for around a tenner, q8400 or similar. Might require bios update tho, a q6xxx might be a safer bet.
 
Last edited:
mattyfez said:
Why stop at core 2, you can drop a quad core in for around a tenner, q8400 or similar. Might require bios update tho, a q6xxx might be a safer bet.
Click to expand...

Except you can't if the board doesn't support 45nm chips. Q6600 (~£12) is likely supported, but as OP has said, he is unsure if the board will do 1066Mhz FSB.
 
almoststew1990 said:
Thanks everyone. I'll go for the E4600 (which is £2.95 delivered!) as this has an 800MHz FSB like my current CPU - not sure 1066MHz will be supported by the board even if the chipset supports it, and there is no motherboard support page to check (or download later BIOS). I doubt I will have many overclocking options on this OEM board. I might run a few benchmarks on the Pentium D first...
Click to expand...

That'll still be much better than a Pentium D. Enjoy!

What games do you play on XP?
 
c2d is much better, but your board supports q6600, get them for £12, if your psu is powerful enough or is atx and can be changed, id go that route.
 
It'll depend on the motherboard, if it's a generic one, you may be limited as to what cpu you can use, however there may be bios updates available.
 
Some of those lower end boards lack the current delivery for 65nm quads and you'll struggle sometimes to even get them stable at stock and/or don't have a BIOS that supports the newer 45nm quads.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom