Thoughts
Intel's decision to amalgamate a second Pentium 4 Prescott core on to a single piece of silicon is a bold move, and it's here to stay. Having used a dual-core system for the first time over this last weekend, one major advantage of running what effectively amounts to two independent processors is difficult to reflect in benchmark graphs. It's utter system smoothness when running two or more CPU-intensive applications at one time. In pure application benchmark terms, single-instance performance is largely dictated by just how well-threaded and well-scheduled an application is. When it is, such as CINEBENCH 2003 in multi-CPU mode or Movie Maker 2.1, performance is absolutely stellar, making effective use of the Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840's parallel processing power. However, when apps. are single-threaded, performance is rarely better than an equivalent speed single-core model's. The latter is especially true in present-day gaming, so enthusiasts looking for massive hikes in system-bound gaming performance will be somewhat disappointed.The 3.2GHz Pentium XE 840 is offered as an alternative to current single-core Extreme Edition CPUs. It may not quite have the pure gaming performance punch as, say, the 3.73GHz XE, but it's a better proposition when considered over a wide variety of applications. Think of it this way. The worst-case performance scenario is that the £650 Pentium XE 840 performs much like a single-core 3.2GHz 640 model. The best-case scenario, that is, being run with apps. that take advantage of its 4-thread parallel processing ability, is performance that no single-core Pentium 4 could ever hope to match, even under the most esoteric cooling.
Both the Pentium XE 840 and range of Pentium D (dual-core, no HT) models will require new motherboards based on either the 955X Express or 945X chipsets. Whether or not it's worth ditching your present system for the obvious benefits of dual-core computing is entirely dependant on your application usage. The Pentium XE 840, whilst hugely impressive in certain environments, will be priced outside of most enthusiasts' financial reach. The interesting thing to see in coming months is just how well the non-HT-equipped Pentium Ds perform when compared against their single-core HT counterparts. It's this performance that will dictate just how well Intel has succeeded in its dual-core approach.
