Sidney | 9th June 2005 16:46 | Dueling Dual Cores: AMD vs. Intel Also included in today's testing is the new Pentium D Model 820, a 2.8GHz dual-core part. Perhaps in an effort to differentiate this line of dual cores from the Pentium Extreme Edition 840, the D Models do not support Hyper-Threading, though both have an 800 MHz front-side bus and 1 MB of L2 cache per core. The most interesting aspect of the D Model 820, however, is that of price: the 820 is currently stickered at $241 in units of 1,000, making it extremely affordable for home builders interested in experimenting with a dual-core system. In contrast to this low price, the Pentium 840 runs at $999 and AMD's X2 4800+ $1,001, though as SimHQ's initial testing showed the Athlon dual core demonstrated very strong performance in today's non-threaded titles while the Extreme Edition 840 lagged somewhat behind Intel's single-core processors due to a larger clock speed difference between the parts. Worth noting for overclockers, however, is that Intel is currently shipping the EE 840 with an unlocked multiplier. http://www.simhq.com/_technology/technology_055a.html |