The Latest Processors: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57, Intel Pentium D 820, Pentium 4 670

Pentium 4 670
It's a logical successor to the Pentium 4 6xx series, one of its closest representatives is the previously reviewed Pentium 4 660. Thus, there is nothing special about it: the same core architecture (Prescott-2M) as in the Pentium 4 660, the same bus clock (800MHz in terms of bandwidth) and the L2 Cache size (2MB), but its clock has grown by another 200 MHz (i.e. up to 3.8 GHz). Judging from the latest (available in Internet) Intel's plans, the Pentium 4 670 must be the last processor in this line, as the 4GHz CPU based on Prescott-2M disappeared from the roadmap of this company last year.
Pentium D 820
It's the lowest CPU in the series of multi-core desktop "non-extreme" processors from Intel. The key difference between the Pentium D and the Pentium XE, unlike the latter, Pentium D has two physical cores, but it doesn't support Hyper-Threading. Besides, the Pentium D 820 operates at the lowest clock among the entire series of Prescott-like CPUs: 2.8 GHz. There is nothing new in other respects: it's just a Pentium XE, but without Hyper-Threading. The main peculiarity of the Pentium D series is more than democratic prices (especially considering dual cores): according to the official data from the manufacturer, wholesale prices for Pentium D 820/830/840 currently amount to $241/316/530. For comparison: the wholesale price for the Pentium 4 670 is $851, Athlon 64 FX-57 — $1031. So, Pentium D 820 can quite set up for the title of a "people's dual core processor" (for quite well-off people, though).
Athlon 64 FX-57
The renowned successor to Athlon 64 FX-55 acquired a new 90nm San Diego core (its differences from Venice are minimal) with an improved memory controller and SSE3 support. Besides, the clock has grown by another 200 MHz to reach 2.8 GHz. It's the first Athlon 64 FX manufactured by the 90nm process technology supporting SSE3. It's an indirect sign that this process technology is streamlined to manufacture flagship processors offering the highest performance. From the users' point of view, the new Athlon 64 FX is no different from the previous model: it is installed into the same CPU socket as the previous Athlon 64 FX-55 and makes no additional requirements to a motherboard.
Testing
Testbed configurations
Processors
AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (1 MB L2, 2.8 GHz core)
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 (1 MB L2, 2.6 GHz core)
Intel Pentium eXtreme Edition 840 (2 x 1 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB, 2 x 3.2 GHz core)
Intel Pentium D 820 (2 x 1 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB, 2 x 2.8 GHz core)
Intel Pentium 4 670 (2 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB, 3.8 GHz core)
Intel Pentium 4 eXtreme Edition 3.73 GHz (2 MB L2, 1066 MHz FSB)
Intel Pentium 4 540J (1 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB, 3.2 GHz core)
Intel Pentium 4 520J (1 MB L2, 800 MHz FSB, 2.8 GHz core)
Motherboards
Intel D955XBK Desktop Board (Intel 955X)
EPoX EP-9PNA+ Ultra (NVIDIA nForce 4 Ultra)
Memory
2x512 MB PC5400 (DDR2-533) DIMM 3-3-3-8 (Corsair)
2x512 MB PC3200 (DDR-400) DIMM 2-2-2-5 (Corsair)
Video card: ATI Radeon X800 (256 MB)
HDD: Samsung SP1614C (SATA), 7200 rpm, 8 MB Cache
AC power adapter: FSP 550-60PLN (500-550W)
Windows XP Professional SP2, DirectX 9.0c
ATI CATALYST 5.4 (Display Driver 6.14.10.6525)
We selected processors for this article (in a seemingly strange way at first sight) based on the transparent (simply biblical) principle "two of every sort": it's quite logical to compare the Athlon 64 FX-57 with the Athlon 64 FX-55, the "low end dual core" Pentium D 820 with the top dual core processor from the same manufacturer - Pentium XE 840. Every pair of dual core processors was supplemented with a single core processor of a similar architecture and clock (Pentium 4 540/520). And Pentium 4 XE 3.73 GHz was a good match to the top desktop Pentium 4 670, due to the minimum clock differences. That's why this hodgepodge is quite systematic and meets the main comparison challenges, even though it looks a tad heterogeneous at first sight.