pluggulp Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 I'm about to upgrade the CPU of my machine (based on intel 945G series Mobo). When I bought the parts I could only spring the money for a Celeron D which I'd now like to replace with a Pentium D. The question is, should I get a Pentium D from the 9x5 series (925, 935) or look for an older one from the 9x0 series (920, 930) on ebay. The older ones have intel's Virtualization Technology (VT) which intel scrapped in the newer 9x5-series CPUs. I am running parallels at the moment but it is a bit sluggish. I expect quite a performance increase from moving to any of the dual-core Pentium Ds. But the question is: How much performance difference in Parallels (or vmware) can I expect between a D925 and a D930 (apart from VT, they are the same CPU) ? Has anyone tested both and is in a position to compare ? Also, can parallels make use of VT if its running on a hackintosh ? Your comments are much appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
consolation Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 I'm about to upgrade the CPU of my machine (based on intel 945G series Mobo). When I bought the parts I could only spring the money for a Celeron D which I'd now like to replace with a Pentium D. The question is, should I get a Pentium D from the 9x5 series (925, 935) or look for an older one from the 9x0 series (920, 930) on ebay. The older ones have intel's Virtualization Technology (VT) which intel scrapped in the newer 9x5-series CPUs. I am running parallels at the moment but it is a bit sluggish. I expect quite a performance increase from moving to any of the dual-core Pentium Ds. But the question is: How much performance difference in Parallels (or vmware) can I expect between a D925 and a D930 (apart from VT, they are the same CPU) ? Has anyone tested both and is in a position to compare ? Also, can parallels make use of VT if its running on a hackintosh ? Your comments are much appreciated. You'd be better off buying an E2140 or E2160 core 2 duo. They are very good overclockers, include ssse3 that Pent Ds lack and cost less than 9xx series. While they lack the VT capability of more expensive c2d, the extra performance over old pentium Ds more than makes up for it. Personally I noticed little difference between chips w/ vt and without when running Parallels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OMX-Knuckles Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 VT doesn't make a big difference... the x86 architecture needs a lot more than that to be good for Virtualization. More memory will provide the biggest boost. 1GB is *okay* but as much as you can realistically get would be better. On my desktop system with 2.5GB of memory I was still a little memory starved while multitasking while running Parallels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pluggulp Posted June 19, 2007 Author Share Posted June 19, 2007 You'd be better off buying an E2140 or E2160 core 2 duo. They are very good overclockers, include ssse3 that Pent Ds lack and cost less than 9xx series. While they lack the VT capability of more expensive c2d, the extra performance over old pentium Ds more than makes up for it. Personally I noticed little difference between chips w/ vt and without when running Parallels. Thanks. Unfortunately my board (Intel D945GNTLKR) is not compatible with the Core series CPUs and I don't want to replace the board as everything works nicely as it is ... I just need a bit of a speed boost and I think the Pentium D should deliver that (compared to the Celeron D). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OMX-Knuckles Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 Yeah, a Pentium D will be quite a bit faster. My recommendation is that you get a Pentium D 805 or 915 and spend the rest of the money on more RAM if you plan on running Parallels a lot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
consolation Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 In that case I'd get the cheapest pD you can find, even something like a 820 or 805 from eBay or some second hand place. It's not worthwhile to sink more money into that system, save up for a new board. You can overclock the {censored} out of the 805/820 chips, not so much the preslers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synaesthesia Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 In response to your ACTUAL QUESTION... I would recommend the 930 for the VT extensions, I believe it would make parallels quite a bit faster. Then again, I have no problem with my P4 630 single core, without VT in parallels...So 925 will work. Why don't you check parallels performance on an iMac, they have VT, and should give you a very good idea of what it's like. Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
consolation Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 Why don't you check parallels performance on an iMac, they have VT, and should give you a very good idea of what it's like. They also have latest C2D chips, making any comparison meaningless. I had an early build of parallels where you could disable the VT extensions. Before going for a VT-less C2D I tried that on a new 24" imac, I found no perceivable difference. I'm sure you can show some with benchmarking, but I'd be surprised if it's worth the extra money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schwinn555 Posted June 20, 2007 Share Posted June 20, 2007 Are you sure your unnamed 945 mboard won't run with core 2 cpu's ? Many will work ,some with core 2 and others core 2 duo. You also don't say which celeron cpu you have. I have the Celeron D 352 . It's 3.2 GB has 512K of L2 cache and is the newer smaller 65 size chip . It's fast clocks to 4.2 GB in my Asus P5L-MX 945 mboard. The Celerons with only 256 L2 are slow. There are now Celeron 420 chips which are core 2 chips without the second core . They are around $50.00 and may meets some poeples needs. The problem with the Pentium D chips is they are furnace room hot. I'm not kidding many people report not needing to use a heater in the room where the machine is running in the winter! Also they eat power for breakfast. Any savings in price will be long gone after a couple of power bills arrive. Listing all the info like your motherboard will help people help you see if there are other choices. I was under the impression that Parallels either requires a VT chip or soon will with the 3.0 version? It sounds like people are saying it works without a VT chip? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pluggulp Posted June 21, 2007 Author Share Posted June 21, 2007 Thanks for the great input y'all: The board is an Intel D945GNTLKR. I checked intel's website, and the Core Duo's are not in the list of supported CPUs for this board. Also I'm not interested in overclocking. I just want a drop-in replacement with a bit more grunt for the existing CPU. So basically, I'm already quite sure that it is going to be a Pentium D. The only real question is whether VT makes a noticable difference when running multiple VMs under parallels. I'm also aware that RAM has a huge effect on VM speed and I will upgrade to 2GB of RAM. Not exactly sure about the model number of the Celeron D I'm using currently. I think it's 2.8 GHz single core 512KB cache. It is slow but it runs cool. Power consumption with the Pentium D is not a big issue as the machine will not be on constantly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew23456 Posted April 3, 2011 Share Posted April 3, 2011 That is just Intel trying to get you to buy a new board. My Intel D945GCCR "Doesn't Support Windows 7," but it works just fine! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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