Pentium D Extreme Edition 965 Review

[Ryan Leech]

Pentium D Extreme Edition 965 HT review

-Ryan Leech

 

The Pentium D Extreme Edition 965 was hardly exciting when it was released in March of 2006. It lost all kinds of benchmarks to AMD Athlons and Intel's own Conroe Core 2 Duo parts, even when clocked at half the clock speed. Core 2 Duos were being released, and the mighty Core 2 Quad was in development. Those Conroe CPUs were a quarter of the price, and performed better than the $1000 Pentium D Extreme. It seemed like a sad end to Intel's NetBurst architecture.

 

That was back in 2006, when programs were only written to use a single core. The Pentium D Extreme was a hyperthreaded dual core. This left the Pentium D extremely handicapped in benchmarks of the time, as NetBurst IPC was severely lacking. Today, in 2014, the Pentium D Extreme gains an advantage over 2006 benchmarks. New games and applications scale dynamically to use all 4 threads, unleashing the full potential of this power-hungry beast.

                        

This chip is no different than any other Extreme Edition part that Intel has released. It overclocks quite nicely with its unlocked multiplier, something that Intel had kept under lock and key during most of the Pentium Era. When the 965 was released, it required the top-of-the-line 975X Northbridge to even run. It came clocked from the factory at a whopping 3.73GHz (baseclock), which is something Intel hasn't even been able to match to this day. It was built on 65nm Presler architecture, the last generation of NetBurst which was known for it's massive power consumption and heat output. The TDP of the 965 is 130W, which comes as no surprise due to the fact that this chip has two Pentium 4s on one die.
                                                                                                                                                                                          

 

 

 

In my brief experience with this chip, I was able to overclock it quite significantly. The motherboard used in this test, was a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P rev 1.6, which was made for Core 2 Duo/ Quad chips, not Pentium Ds. Because of this, Gigabyte limited the vcore for all Pentiums to 1.4v, hindering the overclocks possible. I probably couldn't even utilize the additional voltage, as I was using a stock cooler. Nevertheless, I was able to reach the 5GHz mark, something that was reserved for LN2 back in the day. I was able to reach this frequency mostly due to the motherboard. In 2006, at the time of the 965's release, even the best motherboards on the market were quite terrible. An advantage of living in the year 2014, is the GA-EP45-UD3P from 2008. It has one of the best power phase designs of all LGA775 boards ever made. This allows me to overclock much more efficiently, with much less power ripple and variance.

 

 

Unfortunately, the 5GHz overclock I achieved proved to be unstable due to the 1.4v limit imposed on the board. I found that 4.8GHz was stable in my 30 min prime95 test, but was approaching 104C, so I decided to bring the frequency down to 4.53GHz for heat's sake.

 

Once I had the overclocks dialed in, I fitted the system with a GTX 770 from MSI to test the Pentium's gaming capabilities. I also added in 6GB of Crucial and Samsung DDR2-5400 to ensure that games had sufficient memory. I tested a variety of newer games, on both 1600x900 and 1920x1080 with a GTX 465 and the GTX 770. I found that I got similar results from all four combinations, due to the Pentium being the bottleneck, so I decided to simplify the results by only including benchmarks for 1920x1080. 

 

*All benchmarks are preformed with Pentium D Extreme Edition 965 @4.53GHz 2c/4t, 6GB DDR2 @667MHz CL5, MSI GTX 770 @1287MHz Core, Seagate 250GB laptop HDD, Rosewill 630W 80+ Bronze, and Windows 7 Pro 64 bit

*All fps values were taken with Fraps

 

Battlefield 4

Campaign-Baku

Low settings 1920x1080

2014-04-05 14:23:25 - bf4
Frames: 7916 - Time: 145596ms - Avg: 54.370 - Min: 37 - Max: 85

 

Ultra settings 1920x1080

2014-04-05 14:27:49 - bf4
Frames: 5651 - Time: 133459ms - Avg: 42.343 - Min: 26 - Max: 72

 

Battlefield 3

Multiplayer-Kharg Island Conquest 64 players

Low settings 1920x1080

2014-04-05 14:38:23 - bf3
Frames: 6041 - Time: 190102ms - Avg: 31.778 - Min: 18 - Max: 53

 

Ultra settings 1920x1080
2014-04-05 14:44:14 - bf3
Frames: 6676 - Time: 306542ms - Avg: 21.778 - Min: 10 - Max: 39


ARMA 3

Singleplayer-Workshop content-Skopos Rally Course

Low settings 1920x1080

2014-04-05 15:03:15 - arma3
Frames: 2688 - Time: 76893ms - Avg: 34.958 - Min: 23 - Max: 40

 

Ultra settings 1920x1080

2014-04-05 15:08:31 - arma3
Frames: 1497 - Time: 80419ms - Avg: 18.615 - Min: 13 - Max: 23

 

CS:GO

Offline with Bots-Italy

Ultra settings 1920x1080

2014-04-05 14:53:30 - csgo
Frames: 12065 - Time: 145783ms - Avg: 82.760 - Min: 36 - Max: 133
 

Goat Simulator

Minimum Settings 1920x1080

2014-04-05 15:16:05 - GoatGame-Win32-Shipping
Frames: 7346 - Time: 402717ms - Avg: 18.241 - Min: 0 - Max: 24

 

Geekbench Results @4.53GHz: http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/510079

 

Overall performance was quite good. BF3 ran quite poorly though on ultra in 64 player servers. CPU usage was at 100% in both BF3 and BF4.

 

The Testbed:

 

The Testbed:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Additional images here: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/136095-pentium-d-extreme-edition-965-testbed/#entry1809562

 

Final Thoughts

 

I purchased this chip a few weeks ago on ebay for $50. That's 5% of the original price in 2006. For the amount of overclocks and lols you can get out of this thing, there's no reason not to buy it. While it is very demanding on your motherboard and requires some serious cooling, the fun to price ratio is above anything I have purchased so far.

 

Overall rating: 9/10

 

Would I recommend it? YES!

[SAV1OUR]

someone get this man a time machine so he can go back to when this cpu was the sh*t 

[Lord Pantaloons]

dem jiggahurtz

[ericlee30]

Pentium D Extreme Edition 965 HT review

-Ryan Leech

 

The Pentium D Extreme Edition 965 was hardly exciting when it was released in March of 2006. It lost all kinds of benchmarks to AMD Athlons and Intel's own Conroe Core 2 Duo parts, even when clocked at half the clock speed. Core 2 Duos were being released, and the mighty Core 2 Quad was in development. These Conroe parts were a quarter of the price, and performed better than the $1000 Pentium D Extreme. It seemed like a sad end to Intel's NetBurst architecture.

 

That was back in 2006, when programs were only written to use a single core. The Pentium D Extreme was a hyperthreaded dual core. This left the Pentium D extremely handicapped in benchmarks of the time, as NetBurst IPC was severely lacking. Today, in 2014, the Pentium D Extreme gains an advantage over 2006 benchmarks. New games and applications scale dynamically to use all 4 threads, unleashing the full potential of this power-hungry beast.

                       

This chip is no different than any other Extreme Edition part that Intel has released. It overclocks quite nicely with its unlocked multiplier, something that Intel had kept under lock and key during most of the Pentium Era. When the 965 was released, it required the top-of-the-line 975X Northbridge to even run. It came clocked from the factory at a whopping 3.73GHz (baseclock), which is something Intel hasn't even been able to match to this day. It was built on 65nm Presler architecture, the last generation of NetBurst which was known for it's massive power consumption and heat output. The TDP of the 965 is 130W, which comes as no surprise do to the fact that this chip has two Pentium 4s on one die.

                                                                                                                                                                                          

 

 

 

In my brief experience with this chip, I was able to overclock it quite significantly. The motherboard used in this test, was a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P rev 1.6, which was made for Core 2 Duo/ Quad chips, not Pentium Ds. Because of this, Gigabyte limited the vcore for all Pentiums to 1.4v, hindering the overclocks possible. I probably couldn't even utilize the additional voltage, as I was using a stock cooler. Nevertheless, I was able to reach the 5GHz mark, something that was reserved for LN2 back in the day. I was able to reach this frequency mostly due to the motherboard. In 2006, at the time of the 965's release, even the best motherboards on the market were quite terrible. An advantage of living in the year 2014, is the GA-EP45-UD3P from 2008. It has one of the best power phase designs of all LGA775 boards ever made. This allows me to overclock much more efficiently, with much less power ripple and variance.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, the 5GHz overclock I achieved proved to be unstable due to the 1.4v limit imposed on the board. I found that 4.8GHz was stable in my 30 min prime95 test, but was approaching 104C, so I decided to bring the frequency down to 4.53GHz for heat's sake.

 

Once I had the overclocks dialed in, I fitted the system with a GTX 770 from MSI to test the Pentium's gaming capabilities. I also added in 6GB of Crucial and Samsung DDR2-5400 to ensure that games had sufficient memory. I tested a variety of newer games, on both 1600x900 and 1920x1080 with a GTX 465 and the GTX 770. I found that I got similar results from all four combinations, due to the Pentium being the bottleneck, so I decided to simplify the results by only including benchmarks for 1920x1080. 

 

*All benchmarks are preformed with Pentium D Extreme Edition 965 @4.53GHz 2c/4t, 6GB DDR2 @667MHz CL5, MSI GTX 770 @1287MHz Core, Seagate 250GB laptop HDD, Rosewill 630W 80+ Bronze, and Windows 7 Pro 64 bit

*All fps values were taken with Fraps

 

Battlefield 4

Campaign-Baku

Low settings 1920x1080

2014-04-05 14:23:25 - bf4

Frames: 7916 - Time: 145596ms - Avg: 54.370 - Min: 37 - Max: 85

 

Ultra settings 1920x1080

2014-04-05 14:27:49 - bf4

Frames: 5651 - Time: 133459ms - Avg: 42.343 - Min: 26 - Max: 72

 

Battlefield 3

Multiplayer-Kharg Island Conquest 64 players

Low settings 1920x1080

2014-04-05 14:38:23 - bf3

Frames: 6041 - Time: 190102ms - Avg: 31.778 - Min: 18 - Max: 53

 

Ultra settings 1920x1080

2014-04-05 14:44:14 - bf3

Frames: 6676 - Time: 306542ms - Avg: 21.778 - Min: 10 - Max: 39

ARMA 3

Singleplayer-Workshop content-Skopos Rally Course

Low settings 1920x1080

2014-04-05 15:03:15 - arma3

Frames: 2688 - Time: 76893ms - Avg: 34.958 - Min: 23 - Max: 40

 

Ultra settings 1920x1080

2014-04-05 15:08:31 - arma3

Frames: 1497 - Time: 80419ms - Avg: 18.615 - Min: 13 - Max: 23

 

CS:GO

Offline with Bots-Italy

Ultra settings 1920x1080

2014-04-05 14:53:30 - csgo

Frames: 12065 - Time: 145783ms - Avg: 82.760 - Min: 36 - Max: 133

 

Goat Simulator

Minimum Settings 1920x1080

2014-04-05 15:16:05 - GoatGame-Win32-Shipping

Frames: 7346 - Time: 402717ms - Avg: 18.241 - Min: 0 - Max: 24

 

Geekbench Results @4.53GHz: http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/510079

 

Overall performance was quite good. BF3 ran quite poorly though on ultra in 64 player servers. CPU usage was at 100% in both BF3 and BF4.

 

The Testbed:

 

The Testbed

 

 

 

Final Thoughts

 

I purchased this chip a few weeks ago on ebay for $50. That's 5% of the original price in 2006. For the amount of overclocks and lols you can get out of this thing, it's hard not to buy it. While it is very demanding on your motherboard and requires some serious cooling, the fun to price ratio is above anything I have purchased so far.

 

Overall rating: 9/10

 

Would I recommend it? YES!

Hell yes, I love seeing retro reviews, It brings me back to the good old days when overclocking was a blast to work with

[flibberdipper]

Drop a Core 2 Extreme in and do this again.

[Ryan Leech]

Drop a Core 2 Extreme in and do this again.

That's going to cost ~$200 and will require real cooling

[flibberdipper]

That's going to cost ~$200 and will require real cooling

It would be neat though.

[Ryan Leech]

It would be neat though.

I'll do it eventually, next up though is my E8400

[skitz9417]

nice review 

[Ryan Leech]

I think I will buy a Core 2 Extreme X6800 for the next review

[Ryan Leech]

@Pentium4Life is now the proud owner of this cpu. He will have a build around this cpu in the coming weeks

[Ryan Leech]

Yay! Da Emergency Edition is back!

 

 

 

do it!!!

The E8400 is already in and overclocked

[Shakaza]

The E8400 is already in and overclocked

Then go and benchmark that bad boy!

[Ryan Leech]

Then go and benchmark that bad boy!

Once I get some better RAM, I will benchamrk at 4.5GHZ

[Shakaza]

Once I get some better RAM, I will benchamrk at 4.5GHZ

Awesome! I eagerly await it. I love old hardware for some reason.

[Guest Generallee]

WHAT YEAR IS IT

[HiddenFox]

WHAT YEAR IS IT

2K6 were youtube is for nerds and limewire is amazing!

[Ryan Leech]

2K6 were youtube is for nerds and limewire is amazing!

AND THE PENTIUM D WAS THE SH**

[juretrn]

How much is the board worth?

[qwertywarrior]

it was the AMD of CPUs

[Ryan Leech]

How much is the board worth?

You can buy one on ebay right now for ~$120

[Ryan Leech]

it was the AMD of CPUs

That was cold man.

[qwertywarrior]

That was cold man.

im specifically talking about the heat

[Ryan Leech]

im specifically talking about the heat

 

I believe you mean Haswell And btw I was able to overclock to 5GHz on the stock cooler so that's a plus

[terrytek]

Whaddya say you do a Q6600 and I sit back here, waiting for the review?