In April 2007, I decided that I was going to purchase computer components from NewEgg and assemble myself a nice dual core machine. At the time, dual core processors from both Intel and AMD were pretty expensive; the cheapest one available (and the one that best met my budget) was the Intel Pentium D 805 processor, which was priced around $80 and did not include a fan / heatsink.
I was really surprised; every computer I have built since 2000 have had an AMD processor in them, mostly due to the fact that AMD processors were powerful and much cheaper than Intel's offerings. I wanted to continue with my tradition of using AMD processors, however at the time the AMD dual core processors were simply out of my budget (which was only a couple hundred dollars for a complete system).
I've always been a budget computer user, so I wasn't really expecting much. I was however expecting the Pentium D 805 processor to be more powerful than my older Athlon 64 PC it was replacing, and I really expected it to be able to kill my Mobile Sempron 2800+ laptop.
Boy was I ever wrong.I've tried to give the Pentium D 805 a chance; at first I thought it was my motherboard (a PC Chips) or maybe slow RAM. I got a hold of another motherboard and tried the processor, but the benchmarks don't lie; the Pentium D 805 is a horrible processor.
Now I know that the processor is old now. Actually ancient. I don't care. I can not believe how horrible this processor performs in basic tasks. It's really sad when a Mobile Sempron 2800+ laptop can keep up with a Pentium D 805.
I've used various benchmarking tools to conclude that I hate the Pentium D. It's nothing but two Pentium 4 processor dies thrown onto a board. The 2mb cache sounds impressive, but it is pretty much useless.
Geekbench;I've used Geek Patrol's Geekbench software on the Pentium D 805 system, as well as the Mobile Sempron laptop and a couple other PCs.
The best score I managed to get on the Pentium D 805 system in Windows XP;
1585AMD Sempron 2800+ laptop;
1118The system that was replaced with the Pentium D 805 system;
1509Okay, so maybe the Pentium D is a big improvement over the laptop. But the freakin' Pentium D system is barely better than the Athlon 64 system. Why did I bother to even build a new box when the difference in these two systems is almost minimal?
Geekbench lists that the expected score for a Pentium D 805 processor system is 1600, so I guess I can't blame the motherboard.
SuperPiIt takes my Pentium D 805 processor 59 seconds to calculate Pi to a million places. It takes the Mobile Sempron 1 minute and 6 seconds to complete the same task. When I saw that, I didn't even want to see what my old Athlon 64 could do; it's probably a freaking supercomputer compared to the 805.
Overclocking.I don't want to hear about how I can overclock the shitty Pentium D 805. I've read all about that ever since I bought the horrible thing, and I know why. If I wanted to spend the money in the components to OC the proccessor (better motherboard, great fan, power supply, etc) I would have just bought a better processor to begin with. Besides the Pentium D uses enough power and produces enough heat at 2.6 ghz.I've done every freaking thing in the world to try and make my Pentium D 805 system a great dual processor system. I've changed motherboards, added RAM, graphics cards, etc. I just find that the Pentium D 805 proceesor is a pile of garbage.
I hate Intel. They can suck it. I gave them a chance, and they blew it. I don't care about their Core 2 Duo processors and how amazing they are. They deserve to be shot for releasing such a shitty dual core processor. I guess they really were trying to kill the Pentium brand image.
