Intel has a philosophy, and the Pentium D 820 is a means of fulfilling it. Intel has been pushing the "digital living-room" philosophy for a good year now, and they only get closer with time. With only a slight price premium over an equivalent single-cored Pentium 4, Intel is aiming the Pentium D 820 at the regular consumer crowd interested in taking on the next step in a digital lifestyle.

Note the term I used there -- "regular consumer crowd". This is not the crowd that is interested in top-notch game performance, though they might want to do some gaming every now and then. This is also not the crowd interested in breaking performance records, or even in sitting in one application all day, every day. These are the people who might want to surf the web and listen to music, all while their computer is streaming some video over to another room, or perhaps encode a DVD while they go off and play with a graphics application. Considering Intel's marketing talents, I have no doubts that this relatively low-priced processor will be a hit among this very crowd.

There are two downsides to the Pentium D 820, though. The first of those is that while it is a dual-core processor, priced at a premium, it is still only a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 when it comes to individual, single-threaded tasks. It is a slouch when it comes to office-application and compression performance, but it is especially disappointing in game performance. However, both AMD and Intel have made it clear that higher-clocked, single-cored processors are more appropriate in this segment of the market, making it an issue for the buyer if he/she buys the Pentium D in the hope of better game performance. The Pentium D 820 is a main-stream product that is not optimal for single-threaded applications, though there is still a clear benefit to the second core for productivity and/or multi-tasking reasons, as was illustrated by our combination benchmarks. It should perform like a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 in such single-threaded applications, and it does.

The second point I wish to bring up is that of upgradeability. AMD's X2 4200+, while priced out of the range of the regular consumer, does not require a motherboard upgrade in the case that you own a Socket 939 board already. The upgrade process is just "swap in and go". On the Intel side, the chances are that upgraders will find themselves having to purchase a new motherboard to go along with their Pentium D. Currently, that will have to be a motherboard based one of three chipsets: NVIDIA's nForce 4 for Intel, or Intel's 945/955. In turn, this reduces the value of the Pentium D 820, but in general, the total price should still come out below that of a single X2 4200+ processor. For a new purchaser, the motherboard requirement will not be an issue.

Given those facts, we now have to consider the 820's performance in multi-threaded applications, and where the price premium is justified. Looking at some of our multi-threaded tests, such as TMPGEnc, CineBenc, and POV-Ray, it is quite clear that the Pentium D 820 manages to make a very nice bang for your buck. While I ragged on Intel's dual-core approach, when it comes down to it all, the Pentium D 820 is pretty much 100% efficient in well-written multi-threaded applications. Suffice it to say, I'm quite pleased with that.

To conclude, Intel's Pentium D 820 is a consumer-oriented processor, priced affordably, and the next logical step in transforming your digital lifestyle. As cheesy and marketing-blitzy as that may sound, it is something I have come to believe in. When I first started working with computers, they were the ugly beige boxes that could only do things slowly, and one at a time. Now we live in a time where it is a possibility to have a completely digital home, with the PC being the central hub of it all. A dual-core processor is an ideal component in such a scenario, and should be a focus of great attention from the consumer if they wish to take this next step.