I have upgraded my already fast pc by replacing the 660 3.6 ghz single core with 2mb of L2 cache cpu with a D945 3.4 ghz dual core with 2mb L2 cache on each core cpu
When I was looking at cpu options earlier this year I decided on the 660 as the D830 was £244 and that was only a 3 ghz with 1mb L2 cache on each core.
I didnt even consider a D900 series as all the D900s were well over £300.
The 660 was £270 but as I said earlier I got a great deal on it and paid £208 for it, its still on sale for £270 in most places.
I noticed recently that the D945 was on sale in various places for under £100 inc vat
My pc is used mainly as a media centre pc and I want to add a High Definition Satellite DVB S2 card quite soon.
The best one that appears to be around at the moment reccommends a D 820 or D830 cpu so I assumed my 660 would be fine.
However I recently read a review on that card and was surprised to see that the 3.8ghz version of my cpu worked ok with that card as long as the pc wasnt doing anything else.
If it was running any other applications then the playback was jerky.
So I decided I had best get the D945 while it was cheap and still available.
Before I changed the cpus I ran Si Soft Sandra and a video converting program called Auto Gordian Knot so that I could compare the difference in specifications and performance after fitting the new cpu.
I am really pleased with the results and have attached a word document showing the specifications and performance of each cpu side by side.
I cant believe that the new cpu is under half the price of the old one and is so much faster
Even though the word doc is in the limits of the forum it wont let me post it ?
I will try and post it later somehow.
This is the thing that really impressed me :
Converting 4 Hr 52 min mpg film 6.58 gig to 4.29 gig Xvid using Auto Gordian Knot
660 : Job finished. Total time: 6 hours 3 minutes 46 seconds
D945 : Job finished. Total time: 4 hours 25 minutes 21 seconds