The Test System: Pentium 4 660 On Asus' P5GDC-V
Intel’s Pentium brand still exists, but it is by no means comparable to what the Pentium family looked like back in 2005.
While today’s dual-core Pentium processors are all based on Intel’s Core micro-architecture, the Pentium D and Pentium 4 still utilized Intel’s high-clock rate, low-efficiency NetBurst architecture. If you still find Pentium processors with three digit model numbers, then you’re dealing with one of those outdated hotties (of course, we mean “hotties” literally: the Pentium 4 500 was the first 90 nm Pentium 4 with 1 MB L2 cache for Socket 775; the 600 series was the 2 MB cache model). The Pentium D 800 was the first dual-core solution, and the Pentium D 900 moved those two cores from 90nm to 65nm. You can read just how bad the situation was in the article “The P4 560’s Heat Can Crash and Kill.”
We selected a Pentium 4 660, which has 2 MB cache and was manufactured on an improved 90nm process. The 3.6 GHz processor delivered high performance at the expense of fierce power consumption back in 2005. It was Intel’s top offering until the introduction of the Pentium D dual-core lineup later that year, and the replacement of the Pentium 4/D family by the Core 2 Duo by the middle of 2006.
We looked around at some older motherboards we have in the test lab and found a nice, fully-featured representative from 2005: the Asus P5GDC-V. It is based on Intel’s integrated 915G chipset, which was the first-generation DirectX 9 platform with PCI Express. The board has a x16 PCIe slot, but relies on integrated GMA900 graphics. This board supports both DDR-400 and DDR2 memory at speeds up to 711 MHz (overclocked). However, it supports one memory type or the other, not both simultaneously.
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First thing that comes to mind is that at that time Intel did not produce best CPUs out there, and to illustrate that speed up of system, you just as well choose AMD offering of the time, that would have saved you money on initial purchase and in longer run by lower electricity bill. So, if someone holds performance crown today, does not mean that they held it back in the day. On the other hand, good illustration.
Nice article. Maybe you should've compared it also with a performance drive such as the WD Caviar Black to see a lot more difference. Even though system improvements in upgrading hdd is quite small unlike upgrading ram, there are still a lot of other benefits from getting a newer hdd.
I can't fill 40GB so 1TB is useless
It is the time required to reinstall a system, with the gzillion software and custom tweaks i need to get the system the way I like, that prevents me to upgrade, not the price of the hardware. If there was a way to easily migrate the system content of a harddrive to another, I would have done so several times already (that's also why I, like many others I'm sure, am waiting for win7 before getting an SSD). Any tips on how to easily switch harddrives without re-installing the system would be greatly appreciated.
LOL.....LOL....LOL......LOL....:}
Today's hard drive review brought to you by the letter "F".
For your next review, compare with and SSD.
I went from a RAID 0 array with two 3 year old Seagate drives to one SSD. The performance impact is nothing short of staggering. Vista and 7 both told me that I cannot implement ReadyBoost since the system disk is "fast enough that ReadyBoost is unlikely to provide additional benefit". 
It is the time required to reinstall a system, with the gzillion software and custom tweaks i need to get the system the way I like, that prevents me to upgrade, not the price of the hardware. If there was a way to easily migrate the system content of a harddrive to another, I would have done so several times already (that's also why I, like many others I'm sure, am waiting for win7 before getting an SSD). Any tips on how to easily switch harddrives without re-installing the system would be greatly appreciated.
For this same reason, I use imaging products, such as Acronis, to take a snapshot of my system and image it to another drive. The newer products even take into account different hard drive sizes by allowing you to tell how much space you would like before or after the image. From there, you can just format the extra portion of the partition, or include it in the rest of the original partition.
Imaging is great - no longer do you need to spend hours to install the OS, all your apps, your games, transfer your files, etc - you can just spend about an hour doing the same thing.
"Any tips on how to easily switch harddrives without re-installing the system would be greatly appreciated."
Pretty much any imaging software does the trick. Acronis Trueimage is nice, but costs a few bucks. For free option try Clonezilla. Not such a slick interface as payware but does the job equally well.
Hey, even Windows built-in backup allows you to do a full system copy, although it's more hassle than other solution.
It is expected that a current gen HDD be better than last generation, and with improved energy consumption. I wished I could see the same from CPU's and Video cards
For ye average user the decrease in Windows boot time is enough to warrant an upgrade. It'd be faster to boot the computer, open Firefox, load Facebook/Twitter/Myspace?/any other damn social networking site/Youtube/actual news?
see i have 2x250gb seagate SATA's in RAID0, im thinking 2xWD blacks in RAID0 or even 1 may blow the doors off my current RAID0 setup...
you should also put there an old pata 40Gb driver
What did you guys get bought out by Samsung or something?
What is with this 5400 RPM garbage? Any real enthusiast would never go for that garbage. Who cares about the 3 watt difference when your CPU consumes 140watts and your GPU consumes 250? Seriously, compare apples to apples. Ruined what would have been a useful review by only comparing old to garbage.
I can't fill 40GB so 1TB is useless
... 40GB is your operating system and some programs. You mean you don't do anything productive on your computer like making documents, pictures, video, or music? Loser
Well Im glad the synthetics look better, where are any actual application load tests?
epsiloneri314159: It's not that hard or time consuming, it's easily done in a day, mostly without too much supervision. Your older hard-drive could just as easily crap out on you, then you have to do a clean install without the benefit of having the opportunity to migrate.
When I upgrade a hard-drive, I keep the old one, then just create a 20-30gb OS partition on the new one, then the rest is a data partition. I continue using both until I have the new one exactly the way I want it, then I eventually start booting from the new one, and keep the old one for redundancy of anything important. I don't really like to use disk imaging, but there are plenty of utilities for Linux that can do it.
great article. and yes it would be good to see one of the performance champions on the bench here for comparison. maybe even an affordable 64GB ssd. at any rate im thinking about buying a new hard drive. however iv been pushing to hold off to see what prices do when new stuff might come out in oct. dropping the prices even further possably. or able to pick up a 2TB with any luck for cheaper then 220
great article. and yes it would be good to see one of the performance champions on the bench here for comparison. maybe even an affordable 64GB ssd. at any rate im thinking about buying a new hard drive. however iv been pushing to hold off to see what prices do when new stuff might come out in oct. dropping the prices even further possably. or able to pick up a 2TB with any luck for cheaper then 220
It is the time required to reinstall a system, with the gzillion software and custom tweaks i need to get the system the way I like, that prevents me to upgrade, not the price of the hardware. If there was a way to easily migrate the system content of a harddrive to another, I would have done so several times already (that's also why I, like many others I'm sure, am waiting for win7 before getting an SSD). Any tips on how to easily switch harddrives without re-installing the system would be greatly appreciated.
Ever heard of Norton Ghost? I guess not, as that would clone your existing hard drive to your new drive with ease. There are also other disk cloning applications out there.