Pentium D

Hi.
Just a question..

Pentium D??

What is the deal?

Are they good or stay away?

Cheers

Sir Allwood

Pentium D is two Pentium 4's glued together minus hyper-threading. Technically, they make up a dual core processor, and are better then their P4 counterparts, but compared to any dual core design that is not netburst... they're not that impressive.

There's really no reason to go with Pentium D nowadays. I'm sure there are plenty of distributors trying to unload them at this point, but the Core 2 Duo is eons beyond the Pentium D, and the Athlon64 X2 series is far superior as well. I used to use a Pentium D at work, and despite its high clockspeed it just felt sluggish (even with a new install of Windows). My Athlon X2 at home and my Core 2 Duo at work just feel a lot quicker and more responsive, not to mention benchmarking much better and delivering far superior performance in games. Personally I view the Pentium 4/D architecture as flawed overall and I'd stay away. They're not particularly fast, they use a lot of power, and they get quite hot.