Pentium D 940 or D 945 ??

Question

Hi, I want to buy a dual core cpu and I was looking on Intel's Pentium D 940 and D 945. The 945 is faster (3.4 GHz vs. 3.2 GHz) and is cheaper than 940. Why is that ?? Which CPU is better? I'll do mainly programming with visual studio, eclipse, jdeveloper, sql.

Also due to somewhat tight budget, my motherboards options are Intel D945GNTL or D965SSCK (microATX). Are these OK? I won't be gaming so I think I don't need expensive video cards and fancy MOBOs (besides in my city there's only Intel products available).

Thanks in advance for replies !

Answer 1

Pentium D 940 and D945 are basically the same CPU except that D940 offers the virtualization technology (http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/chart/pentium_d.htm) which is one of the latest technology Intel has. D945 is also backward compatible, which means you can use older board for D945, but not for D940. This may explained why D945 is slightly cheaper. (http://indigo.intel.com/compare_cpu/showchart.aspx?mmID=883951,878544&familyID=1&culture=en-US)

For the motherboard, I would suggest you use D945GNT or D945GTP. I not sure about those D965SS board.

More about Intel Virtualization technology (http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng/products/server/processors/250640.htm)

Answer 2

These answers aren't the greatest. Like someone mentioned earlier, the Pentium D consisted of 2 "real" Pentium 4 processors in one package. At the end of its life, the Pentium 4 was a horribly inefficient chip that required a lot of power and GhZ to keep up with the competition (Athlon 64s). Then Intel released the Core 2 Duo series of CPUs that were all natively dual-core, and later, quad-core. These were an evolution of the older Pentium III CPU architecture and were both a lot faster clock-for-clock than the Pentium 4/Pentium D CPUs as well as nearly 50% more energy efficient. A few years after the Core 2 Duo had been around, Intel released a new cut-down version of it and called it the "Pentium Dual Core" thus reviving the old Pentium name that had been so successful for them for the prior 10 years. This cut-down version had a lot less cache and ran at slower speeds, but people still found clever ways to "unlock" their potential and overclock the heck outta them, which netted similar performance as the flagship Core 2 Duo CPUs of the time. The overclocking potential of them were on par with that of the old Celeron 300a's, quite easily being able to achieve a 50% increase in speed with little to no voltage increase. At the same time, Intel also sold Celeron processors as even further cut-down versions of the Core 2 Duos, with even less cache, and sometimes even just 1 core. To this day, Intel has kept using the Celeron and Pentium names to sell inferior versions of their latest architecture (ie, all the generations of the Core iX line). Also, just recently, the Pentium and Celeron CPUs have also been used to represent Intel's ultra-mobile Atom line of CPUs.

Answer 3

The 945 is better, and usually cheaper, go figure. Anyway as far as mobos, either is fine for your needs, pick whichever is cheaper.

Answer 4

pentium 4 is best for home use