Our test systems consisted of the following hardware:

• Intel D945GTP Reference Board (i945G Express)
• 2*512 MB Corsair XMS2 PC5400UL RAM
• DFI LanParty nF4 SLI-DR motherboard (AMD systems)
• 2*512 MB OCZ PC4000 Gold Edition VX RAM @ 2-2-2-8-1T (AMD systems)
• OCZ ModStream 520W power supply (AMD systems)
• FSP BlueStorm 500W power supply
• Western Digital 1200JD SATA hard drive
• NVIDIA Reference 6600GT 128 MB PCIe video card

The main focus of this review will be on the benefit of adding a second core to the existing Pentium 4 architecture. We have thrown in results for our 3.6 GHz Prescott, as well as a Pentium 4 670 underclocked to 2.8 GHz. On the AMD side, we have included results for our just-reviewed Athlon 64 X2 4200+, as well as a regular Venice-cored Athlon 64 running at 2.2 GHz, which is equivalent to a 3500+ rating. We feel that this set of products will conclusively illustrate both the benefits and drawbacks of the Pentium D 820. Please note that our underclocked Pentium 4 670 has 2 MB of L2 cache, whereas the Pentium D 820 only has 1 MB per core.

To recap, the processors against which the Pentium D 820 will be compared against are:

• Pentium 4 560 (Prescott, 3.6 GHz, 1 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB)
• Pentium 4 670 @ 2.8 GHz (2 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB)
• Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (2.2 GHz, 512 KB L2)
• Athlon 64 3500+ Venice (2.2 GHz, 512 MB L2 per core)

At this time, the results for our combination benchmarks are not available for the Pentium 4 560. Time allowing, we plan to supplement these results at a later date.

Software used during testing consisted of the following:

• Windows XP Service Pack 2
• NVIDIA ForceWare 71.84 drivers
• NVIDIA nForce 6.53 drivers
• CineBench 2003
• LAME MP3 Encoding
• PC Magazine Business Winstone 2004
• PC Magazine Multimedia Content Creation 2004
• POV-Ray 3.6
• POV-Ray 3.7 beta4
• RightMark Memory Analyzer
• SiSoft Sandra
• TMPGEnc MPEG2 Encoding
• WinRAR
• Call of Duty
• Comanche 4
• Doom 3
• FarCry
• Halo
• Half-Life 2
• Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
• Unreal Tournament 2004
• X2 Rolling Demo

Since dual-core processors are being targeted at the multi-tasking crowd, we thought it would be prudent to attempt to simulate some common multi-tasking scenarios. This is where our "combination benchmarks" come in. We talked about these benchmarks in detail in our Athlon 64 X2 4200+ review, though a quick re-cap is in order. The combination benchmarks performed look as follows:

• WinRAR compression (using the benchmark code path) + LAME MP3 Encoding; recorded MP3 encoding time
• WinRAR compression (using the benchmark code path) + Doom 3; recorded the Doom 3 FPS
• TMPGEnc MPEG2 Encoding (single-threaded) + LAME MP3 Encoding; recorded both encoding times
• TMPGEnc MPEG2 Encoding (single-threaded) + Doom 3; recorded the Doom 3 FPS
• Windows Media Encoding + streaming to two clients + Doom 3; recorded the Doom 3 FPS

There is no particular reason for why I selected Doom 3 as the "de-facto" game test for these combination benchmarks, except perhaps for the fact that Doom 3 has proved to be a very clock-speed oriented and "single-threaded" benchmark.

Let's see what this baby can whip up, shall we?