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Core2Duo vs. Pentium D?

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hunterjwizzard

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The other day I got my hands on a microATX socket775 motherboard which I'm planning to turn into another XP rig. As is my pattern, I immediately sat down to max the board out with whatever spare parts I had lying around. It came with a 2ghz Core2Duo, and the only faster LGA775 CPU in my collection is an Intel SL94R, a 3.0ghz dual-core Pentium D.

Is this really any better than the Duo I'd be replacing?
 
hunterjwizzard said:
Is this really any better than the Duo I'd be replacing?
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According to Passmark’s benchmark database, no, it’s worse, by almost 20% (Assuming we’re comparing a C2D E4400.) The Pentium 4 core, and by extension the Pentium D, absolutely sucked in almost any IPC comparison with its contemporaries. Only reason it was faster than the Pentium III was it had a much faster bus interface, and the Pentium M/Core Duo fixed that problem. It also sucks a ton more power than the C2D, which means unless you have God’s CPU cooler it’s badly prone to thermal throttling.

In short, it’s a dog. Only swap if you explicitly want to experience pain on purpose.
 
I do like pain but... I don't think this one will achiever anything. I'll just leave the existing duo in there until I can pick up a faster one, they are not expensive.

Having some weird issues with this motherboard - it came with 2 sticks of 2gb RAM, it will post with either stick in any slot but not both sticks. For giggles I tried loading every slot with spare RAM and it would not post, but I had mixed 1 & 2gb sticks. Going to dig up some matching 2gb sticks and probably just live with 4 gigs of ram. I'm planning to fit this thing into the hollowed out husk of a P4-era dell anyway.
 
The SL94R is built on a 65nm process so the power draw is considerably lower than Prescott Pentium D. Still higher than the Core2. One of the local training firms rather strangely had their entire lab setup using Cedar Mill Pentium Ds running Windows 7 in virtual machines. Was just as responsive as a more modern system though how they got all those at the time 5 year old Dells is a mystery.
 
krebizfan said:
though how they got all those at the time 5 year old Dells is a mystery.
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Off-corporate lease systems. Getting even a sizeable number of identical obsolete Dells is easy. I once visited a certified dell reseller, they had whole rooms full of every model of 5+ year old dell you could possibly imagine.
 
There is also a Pentium dual core that is a better processor than the Pentium D, but not quite as fast as the core2.
 
A 3.33ghz core2duo is about 11 bucks on eBay, so probably what I'll grab once I get all the kinks worked out on this machine. At the moment it seems to be very finiky about what RAM it will take. Apparently the motherboard, despite being a Foxconn-branded, originally came out of a Dell. I found it in an exquisite Collermaster Elite360.

I've you've never seen one of these cases btw - they are a real treat. Holds a full ATX motherboard, 2x5.25" bays, an external 3.5 for floppy, and an internal 3.5 - all in a form-factor that shames MicroATX towers with its smallness. I'll be using this case for decades.
 
hunterjwizzard said:
The other day I got my hands on a microATX socket775 motherboard which I'm planning to turn into another XP rig. As is my pattern, I immediately sat down to max the board out with whatever spare parts I had lying around. It came with a 2ghz Core2Duo, and the only faster LGA775 CPU in my collection is an Intel SL94R, a 3.0ghz dual-core Pentium D.

Is this really any better than the Duo I'd be replacing?
Click to expand...
YEah the Pentium D is an older chip / came out first. I do love the Pentium D however, regardless of its ability to consume watts.
 
krebizfan said:
... how they got all those at the time 5 year old Dells is a mystery.
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Dell's premium warranty/service plan is five years; if you are a serious corporate user with Optiplex or Precision systems you refresh at the end of service. The 501(c)(3) that is my $dayjob has gotten donations that are just barely out of service contract; just got a donation of 48 Optiplex 7070 small form factor desktops; 9th gen core i7's. New enough to update to Windows 11, and much faster than the previous batch of 65 Optiplex 9020 SFF (4th gen i7's).
 
VERAULT said:
Scrapping them would be the more humane thing to do then run modern windows on them...
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Well hang on, its possible that he really hates whoever has to use the damn things. I just hope its not a jail, since making prisoners use Windows 11 would violate their constitutional rights.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
Sadly my hobby desktop computer is one of those 9020s. So far as I notice it's still a perfectly fine computer... except for video editing. That makes it very sad.
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What do you use for editing software? If you're working with older packages you can speed the thing up easy with a bit more RAM and faster CPU. If you're using modern software pretty much only a scream-fast GPU will do anything.
 
hunterjwizzard said:
What do you use for editing software?
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DaVinci Resolve. Which, yes, there's the problem right there. There are lighter "iMovie-calibre" applications that work fine on machines like this, but I kind of got addicted to the real thing. It actually ran "okay" when I first started using it but, of course the system requirements are a moving target, and it won't even run the current version.

Which, really, it's fine. I bought a fire breathing laptop with a GeForce something-or-other in it that does the needful for that, but the desktop sticks around because it does a good job with everything else.

hunterjwizzard said:
If you're working with older packages you can speed the thing up easy with a bit more RAM and faster CPU.
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It already has 16GB and very close to the fastest CPU it can actually take. (i7-4770k; the 4790 was a whopping 100mhz faster.) In *theory* it could go to 32GB but... yeah, that wouldn't be a smart investment unless I tripped over it in the gutter. If it wasn't the SFF form factor I would have *thought* about a GPU upgrade, which is what it would really need, but it was already too old for that to make a ton of sense when it became an acute problem.
 
VERAULT said:
Scrapping them would be the more humane thing to do then run modern windows on them...
Click to expand...
Scrap a 9th gen Core i7? Why? It's plenty fast enough to run modern Windows. Those Optiplex 7070s run Windows 11 very smoothly, at least for everything $dayjob needs; 256GB NVMe drives and 16GB RAM. They'll last at least five more years. The install off a USB drive takes just a few minutes; takes a few minutes more to install chipset and other drivers, and they activate with the Dell UEFI key no sweat.

The 9020s are more than enough machine for Debian 12, and we'll use them until they croak.

Of course, if you want to donate some of the latest models to us we'll follow your advice and scrap the 7070s..... :)
 
VERAULT said:
Way to miss the point entirely! (y) ;)
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What, that's it's more 'humane' to generate unnecessary e-waste than to put them to use for a nonprofit's student lab? There are far older machines that are still even usable for real work.

EDIT: and the 7070s run Win 11 well, not just adequately.
 
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lowen said:
What, that's it's more 'humane' to generate unnecessary e-waste than to put them to use for a nonprofit's student lab? There are far older machines that are still even usable for real work.

EDIT: and the 7070s run Win 11 well, not just adequately.
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The joke being that making any living creature use Windows 11 is inhumane. Let alone poor kids. Those kids have it bad enough without being subjected to Windows 11!
 
lowen said:
EDIT: and the 7070s run Win 11 well, not just adequately.
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Windows 11 does not run well. Its windows 11.

Microsoft has been STAGGERINGLY consistent over the years with every other windows operating system being trash. Let's look at it:

Windows 3.1? Wonderful.
Windows 95? Terrible.
Win98? Awesome!
WinME: Horrible.
Windows XP? Possibly the finest operating system ever created.
Windows Vista? Well, you were there.
Windows 7? No XP, but infinitely better than Vista.
Windows 8? Try Vista 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Windows 10? Was pretty great until the feature-creep got out of control a couple years ago, still serviceable.

The pattern here does not bode well for Windows 11. But, hey, 12 should be pretty deece!
 
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