Intel Pentium D 960 Processor

The Blue Camp's Dual-Core Salvo

Quite frankly, we thought the Pentium 965 Extreme Edition from Intel was the last attempt at rivaling AMD with their existing Presler based CPUs. While we are still right that they haven't put up any speedier models than they already have, a check recently on their Pentium D lineup online saw yet another silent addition – the Pentium D 960. Following their model number nomenclature, the Pentium D 960 is part of their mainstream dual-core offering (albeit on the higher-end side) that still utilizes the somewhat limited 800MHz FSB for communication and data transfer to and fro the processor, but the core clock has now been bumped up to 3.6GHz. Still not the highest clock speed for an Intel dual-core processor, but it healthily surpasses the Pentium XE 955 and that should make for an interesting comparison. Lets take a quick look at how the various models stack up with each other:-

The entire Pentium D 900 series have a very unified feature and specification list that they only differ from each other in the form of clock speed and power draw. This makes the lineup ostensibly very identifiable as opposed to AMD Athlon 64 X2 processors at the moment. On the other hand, we can't say the same for their existing Pentium 4 lineup, which while being well differentiated with various model numbers, have become rather confusing due to the variety. Thankfully, that's not an issue (yet) with the comparatively newer lineups where processor features have been relatively settled. Take note that the old Pentium D 800 series, which is Intel's first lineup of dual-core processors, are still lingering in retail. Though its performance isn't too far behind the 900 series, we advise against opting for them (besides the 805 budget model) since the Pentium D 900 series are officially priced lower than the 800 series. Hence you only stand to gain for the same outlay.

In this article, we’ve lined up the entire Pentium D 900 series which involves all five processors, along with a couple of Athlon 64 X2 processors to give you an idea how they rank. More importantly, we'll be focusing on Intel's latest Pentium D 960 model and have pitted it up against the Intel Pentium 955 Extreme Edition processor as well as AMD's current best X2 model. Before we embark on this interesting comparison, take a moment to freshen yourself on how the mainstream dual-core CPUs stack up in features and characteristics:-

One thing's for sure, the AMD Athlon 64 X2 series are more environmentally friendlier than the Intel counterparts as far as the specifications go. With lower thermals and support for AMD's Cool 'n' Quiet technology for even more power savings and low noise operation, this is one area that Intel is finding it hard to rival even with their advanced 65nm silicon process technology.

An added reservation we have on Intel's Pentium D 900 series is the lack of incorporating the Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST). Though the specs mark that the Pentium D 900 series as having EIST support, if you traverse through their online Processor Spec Finder, you would be surprised to find that none of the 900 series CPUs have EIST support as of now. Intel did make a mention previously that another revision in the second half of this year would support that, but we doubt that remark since Core 2 Duo for the desktop would likely be out then. In its absence, the Pentium D 900 series do have Virtualization Technology support built in, though we would have much rather had EIST available as well. While these processors definitely run cooler than their preceding 800 series models, EIST would only serve to better that standard. The higher speed variants approaching the Extreme Edition variants still run hot, especially in tropical environments and EIST could lend a helping hand here. For more information of the Presler core used in the Pentium D 900 series, we have had that covered in our previous article over here . Feature differences aside, if you ready to brace yourself on the test results of the Pentium D 900 series, read on and find out if those performance figures can make up for what they lack.

Test Setup & Benchmarks

With the addition of the Pentium D 960 processor, Intel's lineup on the high end just got more interesting. We've seen the specifications on the previous page, so here's a table of mainstream dual-core processor e-tail prices as of publishing this article:-

Even though both camps have five mainstream dual-core processors each, they cannot be easily cross-compared as processors from both Intel and AMD sport a different architecture. This is easily seen on our various benchmarks on the forthcoming pages and we ask of you to take careful note of their performance and price quotients when making a decision for yourself. We only managed to obtain three processor models from the Athlon 64 X2 series, but they proved to good performance markers to help you gauge the entire series. Without further ado, the following are the testbed specifications and benchmarks used in this article.

The components used in the AMD testbed include:-

• ASUS A8V Deluxe (VIA K8T800 Pro chipset)
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ / 4400+ / 3800+ processors
• 2 x 512MB Corsair DDR400 non-ECC memory modules (CAS 2.5, 3-3-6)
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
• MSI GeForce FX 5700 256MB (AGP) - with NVIDIA Detonator XP 61.34 (beta)
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2

The components used in the Intel testbed include:-

• ASUS P5WD2-E Premium (Intel 975X Express chipset)
• Intel Pentium 955 Extreme Edition (with Hyper-Threading) and Pentium D 960 / 950 / 940 / 930 / 920 processors.
• 2 x 512MB Kingston DDR2-667 non-ECC memory modules (CAS 4, 4-4-10)
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA hard disk drive (one single NTFS partition)
• MSI GeForce PCX 5750 128MB (PCI Express x16) - with NVIDIA Detonator XP 61.34 (beta)
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2

The benchmarks used in this review include:-

• BAPCo SYSmark 2004
• SPECCPU 2000 v1.2
• Lightwave 3D 7.5
• Futuremark PCMark 2005 Pro
• Cinebench 2003
• XMpeg 4.5 (DivX encoding)
• Futuremark 3DMark03 Pro
• Futuremark 3DMark05 Pro
• Futuremark 3DMark06 Pro
• Unreal Tournament 2004
• AquaMark3

Results - SYSmark 2004

For its price, the new Pentium D 960's performance matches that of the US$1,000 Pentium 955 XE model and that's quite commendable. However, it's unable to displace the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ that performed remarkably in the Content Creation test suite, thus pulling its overall performance score a good degree. Office productivity scores took a hit for the entire Athlon 64 X2 series and that's because of the large working data sets preferring the Pentium D 900 series equipped with double the L2 cache quantity. Looking at the overall scores, it's a good bet that the Athlon 64 X2 4600+ would be equally matched up with the new Pentium D 960 rather than the 4800+ model in both performance and price.

Results - SPECCPU 2000 v1.2

In the grueling compute intensive SPECCPU tests, the Pentium D 960 came out tops in this comparison, rivaling and even surpassing the once supreme Pentium 955 XE processor. Clearly, the raw clock speed advantage of the 3.6GHz Pentium D 960 was easily favored over all other factors, evident from the results and true to the nature of the benchmark. No thanks to this newcomer, it looks like the Pentium 955 XE is destined to gather dust on the shelves. Its AMD competitors too had a hard time keeping up in this test and were greatly disadvantaged by their low clock speeds and were distanced further in the floating-point tests as the Intel processors have always had an upper hand in this area due to their NetBurst architecture.

AMD's position hardly changed in the SPEC rate tests, but surprisingly, the Intel Pentium 955 XE sort of 'fumbled' when two copies of the same workload were executed. The reason? Hyper-Threading is the culprit here. If you recall, the Extreme Edition class of processors have Hyper-Threading to allow them to execute four threads consecutively (on four logical processors, but there are only two real physical cores). The Pentium D class processors on the other hand, have no Hyper-Threading, limiting them to two threads for simultaneous execution on the two real physical cores. Now what happens on the Extreme Edition processor is that that operating system is unable to cleverly dispatch the threads to the right logical core. For example in the case of the two-user SPEC rate tests, if two threads are being issued to two logical cores that belong to the same core, the processor's equivalent operating speed is as good as back to a single core Pentium 4 with Hyper-Threading. This is the reason why the Pentium 955 XE took a substantial performance hit. There are actually more such scenarios in our benchmark suite and this only goes to show that Hyper-Threading isn't really your best ally in all cases though it was a great idea to use unused processor resources. The current generation of processors is probably the last of them to feature Hyper-Threading as Intel's forthcoming Core 2 Duo processors will no longer have it and looking even further ahead, Intel is going to employ multiple cores instead.

Results - Lightwave 3D 7.5

The Athlon 64 X2 lineup takes a huge win in this rendering benchmark that has benefited tremendously from its efficient architecture's short pipelines and well tweaked memory controller. Even the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ performs almost as well as the Pentium D 960.

Results - Futuremark PCMark05

Next, we have a few lighter tests from the PCMark05 test suite to quickly assess the CPU's overall performance and the platform's memory subsystem. Take note that PCMark05 taxes the CPU's cache a lot more than PCMark04, thus we see that the Intel Pentium D series excel at this test with the Pentium D 960 right on the heels of the Extreme Edition processor.

Overall memory subsystem performance too goes to the Intel processors thanks in part to their higher clock rates and greater memory throughput. Hopefully, AMD's AM2 processors would do better in these theoretical tests and we'll see about that real soon.

Results - Cinebench 2003 & XMpeg 4.5

Similar to the Lightwave 3D application, Cinebench 2003 is another rendering benchmark where AMD's shorter processing pipelines gave it an upper hand in this test. As for the Pentium D 960, it was trailing some 10% behind the Extreme Edition processor mainly because it was disadvantaged by its limited 800MHz FSB versus the latter 1066MHz FSB. The test most definitely scales with processor clock speeds, but it also factors in overall system throughput and as such, the Pentium 955 Extreme Edition took the lead here.

Results - Futuremark 3DMark03, 3DMark05 and 3DMark06

Keeping the best for the last has been our style of presenting benchmark results and it's no different in this article as we present gaming related results on the following two pages. First up is the trio of results we obtained from three different versions of FutureMark's synthetic CPU game tests - 3DMark03, 3DMark05 and the latest 3DMark06 installment.

The older 3DMark03 CPU score best depicts less complex single-threaded gaming performance and it wasn't surprising to find AMD's Athlon 64 X2 lineup leading the pack. 3DMark05 implements some light threading elements and a slightly larger workload, but the AMD dual-core processors still stack up well to it. In 3DMark06, FutureMark made sure that the CPU plays a more prominent role as most of the new processors being sold would be dual-core capable and can tackle more demanding calculations in line with more advanced game interfaces that are due to be out as well. Thus, we see larger workloads, increased intersystem communication and that seems to have given both AMD and Intel processors a more equal footing in the latest 3DMark installment. Of course all this pure theoretical testing and so we have real world game engine tests on the next page to see how they pull through in reality.

Results - Unreal Tournament 2004 and AquaMark 3

Throwing in a couple of real-world benchmarks, we see AMD's Athlon 64 X2 series basically dominating the Intel camp. As you are reading this, we are already evaluating newer games and on a much beefier testbed, but the results thus far stand the same � the Athlon 64 X2 series are still in pole position.

Conclusion

We have to admit, the silent debut of the Intel Pentium D 960 was actually a very welcomed move. More so because the US$560 processor is a healthy match for the US$1,000 Pentium 955 Extreme Edition processor in many test scenarios. We'll even go as far as to say that the Pentium D 960 has made the Pentium 955 XE obsolete as we don't see any real premium standing for it that's worth twice the cost of the newcomer. Of course Intel preachers with great spending power still have the Pentium 965 XE to turn to, so all grounds have been covered.

If you have a good look at Intel's Pentium D performance versus AMD's Athlon 64 X2, you would realize that Intel actually has a much wider offering despite the fact that both series have five processor models. The difference is that Intel's dual-core processors come as far more affordable and has the entire price/performance range spectrum covered whereas AMD's dual-core processors focus more towards the higher-end range and are consequently priced higher as well. Therefore, the mainstream dual-core processors from both parties aren't exactly comparable and cater to different groups completely. It is thus imperative that you identify what sort of tasks your prospective system would engage and at what budget is it all acceptable and then choose the right processor for the task. Each of them have their own strengths as can be seen from our testing, but if you would want our opinion as the better all-round processor for the general consumer, we would pick the AMD Athlon 64 X2. However, if you require the responsiveness of the dual-core system on the more affordable side of things, Intel's Pentium D lineup is the most obvious choice and it isn't all that bad. In fact, it makes a great chip for highly compute intensive tasks as portrayed in SPECCPU and other tests.

Focusing on the higher performance dual-core processor solutions, the new Intel Pentium D 960 is both a hit and a miss. While it is Intel's best Pentium D processor, it couldn't outpace AMD's best mainstream dual-core processor and more often than not, it was found suitable to contest AMD's Athlon 64 4600+ rather than the 4800+ model in both performance and price. Still, rendering and gaming performance are two crucial areas where its competitor manages to best almost the entire gamut of Intel Pentium D processors. Likewise, the blue camp's strengths lie in compute intensive processing that relay heavily on floating –point operations, manipulating huge data sets thanks to its large L2 cache and video encoding.

In the end, if you add up the tangible (non-performance oriented) processor features as discussed early in the article such as AMD's Cool 'n' Quiet promoting quieter operation and conserving power in addition to the processor's own lower power envelop, the Athlon 64 X2 still has the wining edge to appeal towards most consumers, unless of course one has specific needs where the Pentium D lineup's forte is most pronounced. The lack of functioning EIST support, high power draw and nosier cooler operation in warm tropical environments are real dampeners for the Pentium D 900 series in our opinion. Hopefully, Intel's next strike coming in the third quarter of this year would solve all these concerns and help it compete even more aggressively than ever before.

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