Dual-core Pentium D 805 (Smithfield)
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Date: 15.05.2006 |
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Introduction
Late last year, a critical situation shaped up on the market of desktop processors. Because of missed supplies of AMD's lower-end processors, prices on them went up immensely, almost twice as much. That resulted in the rise of prices for Intel processors, albeit not that high. But in March this year prices for Athlon 64 3000+ and 3200+ stabilized and now they can be made available at 3200 rubles (~$115) and 3600 rubles (~$130), respectively. Prices for Intel processors remained unchanged: the 6х0 line still sells at quite a high amount, P4 630 - at 4700 rubles (~$160), P4 640 - at 5600 rubles (~$200). As a result, if contra-posed, the produce by AMD offers substantial price advantages, lower heat emission level, and higher performance at games.
Absolutely reverse situation shaped up on the market of desktop dual-core processors. As before, Athlon64 X2 3800+ is still AMD's younger model which is available at 9000 rubles (~$320), whereas Intel offers Pentium4 920/930 at quite affordable 6600/6800 rubles ($235/$240). The Pentium 9x0 line is based on the new Presler core which features in a relatively new level of heat emission and superb overclocking capability. The low price is definitely not enough for a convincing victory, but at least it can make the user think twice before making a purchasing decision.
According to Intel's plans for aggressive promotion of dual-core processors, for the recent months the company has released a very interesting model - Pentium D 805. It is based on the Smithfield core (1 MB of L2 cache per each core), runs at 2.66 MHz, and the system bus speed is 133 MHz (533 MHz QPB). This processor did not arouse much interest but only until it hit the retail at 3700 rubles (~$125) for the OEM version (versus 4000 rubles (~$135) in the BOX version). As a result, the processor simply has no direct competitors and we can state that it has created a new market of dual-core low-end systems.
Pentium D 805 processor
The processor is packaged in a box of the following form:
The user can get a complete information on the processor from both the box cover
and the marking of the processor which is seen through a transparent window in the upper part of the box.
Externally, the processor doesn't make any difference from other LGA775 models.
On the reverse side, Pentium D 805 has the same positioning of capacitors as in the processors of pervious steppings of the Smithfield core:
As you can see, the processor in question is based on a new stepping of the Smithfield core - F47 B0 (remember that the first Smithfield processors were based on the stepping F44 A0).
Therefore, we can expect some improvements in power consumption and overclocking. In fact, it's just overclocking we are most interested in since the lower-end models of processors show the best results at that and allow for improving the system performance substantially, and to save some money on that.
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