OT: SL9AN or eCoreDuo

[RJK]

...seeing as there are still a few Pentium D 965's around, for a fraction of
what they cost, for a long time, and seeing as my motherboard supports this
cpu ; would it be best to buy a cheaper CoreDuo, or a D965 (3.73ghz with
HT'ing). I currently have a D 935 which is quite pleasant.

regards, Richard

 

[Paul]

CoreDuo wins!

I'm running both on Gigabyte boards. The CoreDuo E8500 3.16 (SLAPK) on a GA-P35-DS3L and the 3.73 EE (SL9AN) on an older GA-8915P-Duo. They have been head to head. The CoreDuo usually outperforms the 3.73 by about 15-20% minimum. I have also just built (for myself) two new Quadcores (Q9450 2.66 L2 12 MB on an EVGA 750i SLI w/2 XFX8800GTX & Q9300 2.50 on a Gigabyte EP35-DS3R). They average another 42-67% faster.

Skip the 3.73 & CoreDuo if you can. I first thought they were a lot quicker but now am dissatisfied. Mine have been used for about 6 mos but will soon be found on eBay. MOST IMPORTANT: Whatever you do, make sure you get the chip that has the largest L2 cache. Everything is better with the largest L2 cache you can afford.

All 4 of my personal rigs are KOOLANCE liquid cooled cases so I can push everything hard. We couldn't keep the 3.73 stable much above 4.0 but the 3.16 was stable above 5.0


..\\J