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A 4.1 GHz Dual Core at $130?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the power-on-a-budget dept.

joshmo97 writes "Tom's Hardware has found that the Pentium D 805 runs stable at 4.1 GHz and outperforms Intel and AMD's flagship offerings in many benchmarks. From the article: 'The Pentium D 805 is a budget CPU, but it puts lots of processors from AMD and Intel to shame. Although it is not based on the latest 65 nm core, this CPU remains stable even when operating at amazing 4.1 GHz. The Pentium D 805 ascends to the throne as the new King of overclocking, knocking out the AMD Opteron 144.'"

6 of 288 comments (clear)

  1. Longevity? by User+956 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ok, so you can overclock it to 4.1Ghz.. but how many weeks will it last before it burns out and you need to buy a new one?

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
    1. Re:Longevity? by tomstdenis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Who says it's not damaged already. That's one of the problems with these hacks. You could break a transistor and instead of getting a 1 in 10^-20 chance of error it's now upto 10^-9. Once in a while you'll get an error, probably not notice it yourself but something your doing could be affected.

      This hack may be ok for a gaming rig, but I wouldn't do it to my workstation.

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
    2. Re:Longevity? by Firehed · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Have you ever overclocked before? Going 1MHz over the limit won't fry it, you'll get at worst an unstable system. You'd have to go well over the limit (probably 10% over or more), and often overvolt it by a good amount too, in order to actually damage the thing. And before you counter with the argument of shortening the lifetime - yes, you will, but a processor will far outlast its usefulness, unless you've got it cooled to absolute zero running at 40ghz in which case the lifetime is probably shot. When you're talking about a chip lasting eight years instead of ten... well, how many of us have systems from 1996 (or 1998 for that matter) that we still consider useful?

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
  2. More underclocking/undervolting articles! by Phoenixhunter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Honestly I've been there and done that, I think I still have my Celeron 300mhz running at 450mhz somewhere around here. But these days, all I really want in a computer is something that has decent performance and doesn't sound like a vacuum cleaner. I'd much prefer to know which CPU's I can undervolt/underclock, and reduce the DB to a minimum.

  3. Sample size by l2718 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The article seems to claim that one chip could be overclocked to 4.1GHz. That's a far cry from saying that all such chips will work at that clock speed. A sample size of one isn't very informative about a population.

  4. Diminishing Returns by maximthemagnificent · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I notice that while the clock rates climb quickly, the performance levels on most real world benchmarks level out pretty quickly. So why bother waste all the time and electricity?