Overall performance with the D 820 is good. In most tests, it reported better performance than the P4 650. These were mainly CPU benchmark tests with SiSoft Sandra, PCMark05 or Prime95. But in games, the P4 650 reported higher framerates. However, if you are planning to use the processor for multi-processing, then the D 820 will serve you much better than the P4 650, as we saw in the PCM05 multitasking benchmarks.

One good thing with the D 820, is the lower temperature levels in comparison with the D 840. These were not too far from a P4. In idle, the temperature is close to 41°C while under full load, it reached 57°C. This is much lower than in the case of the D 840 which started at 54°C and under full load, climbed to over 70 °C.

Overclocking the D 820 is quite easy. Without any great effort, we set the CPU to run from the default 2.80GHz up to 3.57GHz. The gain in performance is significant and even greater in game environments, where you can gain anywhere from 10fps to 25fps, depending on the resolution and filtering settings.

The D 820 costs approximately US$258 on the e-market, while the P4 650, US$275, and was one of the main reasons we decided to pit the two processors in a head to head. The price for the D 840 at the same time, was close to US$537. So if you are about to get a new processor for your system and you don't know whether to go for single or dual core, then the answer depends on what exactly you are planning to do. Do you just want to play mostly games, or do you need good, overall performance running lots of processes? In the first case, the P4 650 is a definite winner while in the second, the D 820.