The Pentium 4 670 and Pentium D 820 present us with two very different performance scenarios. The 3.8 GHz Pentium 4 670 is a powerhouse in all respects, and is equally adept at games as it is with media encoding and office applications. This processor also supports Hyper-Threading and offers smooth desktop multi-tasking and a noticeable performance gain with multi-threaded applications. It's really a case of the best of both worlds, as the Pentium 4 670 has the high-end clock speed for the games, and HT to ensure smooth desktop performance and top-end MPEG-2, DivX and Windows Media Encoder speed.
The Pentium D 820 offers only a 2.8 GHz clock speed, but its true dual core design surpasses the desktop and application multi-threaded performance of a HT enabled processor, even one clocked much higher. The only negative with this design occurs when single-threaded programs are brought into play, or more to the point, the vast majority of PC games. Under this scenario, the Pentium D 820 magically transforms into a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 Prescott; certainly able to handle today's games, but not at the same level of a higher-end Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 processor.
The Intel Pentium D line must be code-named for "Pentium Discount" as these are priced extremely low compared to the competition. The Pentium D 820 is especially attractive, and is priced at $241 in 1KU lots, while the Pentium D 830 and 840 are priced at $316 and $530, respectively. This is quite a bit lower than the Athlon 64 X2 debuted at, which runs at $537 for the 4200+ to over $1,000 for the highest clocked 4800+. Currently, the Pentium D is still a bit difficult to find, but we did find a few listings in the $300-$310 range for the Pentium D 820, $375-$410 for the Pentium D 830, and $600+ for the Pentium D 840, all retail models.
The Pentium 4 670 is pushing into Extreme Edition territory when it comes to overall performance, and Intel has followed suit by pricing it that way as well. Current retail supplies are still quite low, but it sits in the $910-$930 range for the retail processor, which compares to only $625 for the 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 660, or $900 for the Pentium 4-3.73 GHz Extreme Edition, and over $1100 for the Pentium Extreme Edition 840. At these prices, it's tough to recommend the Pentium 4 670 in terms of overall value, but we suspect that as supplies increase, prices will continue to drop.
* Please note that these prices were taken at the time of review and are not meant to reflect long-term trends.
The Pentium 4 670 and Pentium D 820 present two very different philosophies when it comes to desktop processors. The 3.8 GHz Pentium 4 670 is one of the fastest Intel processors available and with Hyper-Threading support, in addition to high-end game performance, it also functions quite well in terms of both multi-tasking and multi-threading performance. The Pentium D 820 offers up two physical cores, and in terms of multi-threading, far surpasses anything HT can offer at the same clock speeds. Multi-tasking is extremely smooth and multi-threaded performance only takes a back seat to the Pentium Extreme Edition 840. Single-threaded game performance is lower, but if desktop multimedia encoding and multi-tasking is more important, then the Pentium D line offers a super combination of price and performance.
