The Sandy Bridge Pentium Review: G850, G840, G620 & G620T Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 23, 2011 12:11 AM ESTFinal Words
Despite boasting Intel's latest Sandy Bridge microarchitecture, the conclusions here are pretty much unchanged from the past. Intel maintains an advantage when it goes up against an AMD chip with the same number of cores, almost regardless of clock speed. In the case of the Pentium G620, even an Athlon II X2 265 with a 27% clock speed advantage can't outperform the Sandy Bridge based CPU. If you're choosing between chips with the same number of cores at the same price, Intel wins.
The decision tilts in AMD's favor if you start comparing to the Athlon II X3. In heavily threaded workloads, the Athlon II X3's third core helps put it ahead of the entire SNB Pentium lineup. If you're building a machine to do offline 3D rendering, multithreaded compiling or video transcoding then AMD continues to deliver the best performance per dollar. It's in the lighter, less threaded workloads that the Pentium pulls ahead. If you're building more of a general use system (email, web browsing, typical office applications and even discrete GPU gaming), the Pentium will likely deliver better performance thanks to its ILP advantages. What AMD has offered these past couple of years is an affordable way to get great multithreaded performance for those applications that need it.
Unfortunately the entire Sandy Bridge Pentium lineup is clock locked. Without turbo modes there's no support for overclocking at all. While these new Pentiums would have normally been great for enthusiasts looking to overclock, Intel has ensured that anyone looking to get more performance for free at the low end will have to shop AMD. Unfortunately Intel's advantage in single/lightly threaded performance is big enough that a clock speed advantage alone is generally not enough to make up for it (see G620 vs. Athlon II X2 265 comparison). It's sad that it has come to this. I was hoping we'd see more K-series SKUs at the low end but it seems like those will only be for the enthusiasts at the high end.
The Pentium's on-die GPU isn't particularly impressive. It's the HD Graphics 2000 from the rest of the Sandy Bridge lineup without Quick Sync or any of the extra video features. I am particularly sad that Quick Sync is missing as it would've made these Pentiums extremely attractive for users that do a lot of video transcoding. Thankfully video decode acceleration and HD audio bitstreaming support remain, so if you're looking to build a cheap Sandy Bridge based HTPC and don't care about the frills these chips will work just fine.
However, if you're building a system to do any sort of 3D gaming you're much better off either springing for a cheap discrete card or looking at AMD's A6-3650 if you want to stay integrated. Although you can play older titles at low resolution on the Pentium's on-board GPU, you'll have a much better experience with a discrete GPU or with the A6.
It all boils down to this. If you want a good, cheap, general purpose PC then the Pentium G620 seems competent and cheap. You can consider the G840 if you want a bit more performance. If you do a lot of threaded work (e.g. offline 3D rendering) the next step up is the Athlon II X3 455. If you do any amount of consumer level video transcoding using apps that are Quick Sync enabled, opt for the Core i3 2100 instead. If gaming is important to you then either buy a discrete GPU or look to AMD's Llano.
As far as AMD's A6 vs. A8 goes, the A8-3850 only commands a $20 price premium over the A6-3650. That $20 gives you another 8 - 10% on the CPU side and around 20% on the GPU. In my opinion, if you're considering a Llano system - spring for the A8.
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86waterpumper - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - link
It's not really a attempt, they have it all sewn up. Intel has dropped their prices and I don't see anywhere at all that amd can compete with the exception of someone that needs a six core for cheap. Everyone here is talking about unlocking cores and o/c and such. This is not the intended purpose of these nor is unlocking cores ever a sure thing. The new bar to hit is power consumption with acceptable performance. A g620 and h61 is perfect for a fileserver or htpc etc. I have always liked amd but they have even overpriced llano. The a8350 ought to be 100 bucks let alone the a6350. Their cpus use too much power, even the zacate. My buddy is building a new computer and doesn't care about overclocking. I told him to go with a h61 and i3 2100. It just makes more sense since he can upgrade to a i5 or i7 down the road. a x3 may be cheap but it's on a old platform. Intel has a much better sata driver also. Someone said above they never could find a decent intel motherboard for cheap. For 65 bucks, I can buy a h61 biostar board that has vga, dvi, and hdmi out, plus 2 usb 3.0 etc. This is even on a matx format. The only thing missing other than sata 6gb is usually firewire and esata but these are absent from alot of full size boards these days too. Firewire isn't used much anymore and esata can be had for 2 bucks and a backing plate with some wires.mino - Thursday, August 25, 2011 - link
AMD competes with Llano. And there was a reason Intel lowered prices - they now have to squeeze a GPU into a budget where AMD needs none.frozentundra123456 - Thursday, August 25, 2011 - link
This is true to a certain extent, but I would also argue that for 90 percent of the users on the low end, especially if you dont game, the integrated graphics on the Pentium would be more than sufficient.86waterpumper - Thursday, August 25, 2011 - link
AMD competes and outstrips with Llano on the graphics front but not on price and not on cpu. No hardcore gamer is going to buy these chips. I still cannot understand the target marget on these Llano desktop parts? It's sure not for htpcs, because they don't need this much graphics power, and it's certainly not for hardcore gamers because it's not enough gpu and nowhere close to the cpu power they need. There is no compelling reason at all to pay 140 bucks for a a8350 instead of the i3 2100. Now I do see where Llano has it's place in the laptop market, but they need to get the power consumption down.mino - Sunday, August 28, 2011 - link
i3 without a GPU is good for SuperPI. And that is about it.You may wanna look-up Steam statistics what most people play with.
As for "but they need to get the power consumption down", I am just wondering what are you tlaking about when Llano has comparable idle and LOWER load consumption to Intel (without proper GPU!).
Sure everybody should keep getting power down. But that claim of yours smell ignorance and/or PR warfare.
najames - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - link
Do you have an idle power comparison test??? These would make a dandy server if they idle without taking much power. It would be nice to see IGP power, not using the normally tested large video card.azcoyote - Thursday, August 25, 2011 - link
To anyone disparaging these Intel Pentium chips, I challenge you to show me a way to build a newest architecture PC for around $200. I just bought a combo deal from NewEgg for like $239 that has 4GB, 500GB HDD, G620, MSI Mobo, Case, Power supply, Keys, Mouse, and speakers. When you need a PC for someone who does mostly Facebook and legacy games, that is pretty hard to beat. Gonna throw an old X1900 I have handy in there for them and call it good. Thrilled to see these available!ClagMaster - Friday, August 26, 2011 - link
@ArmandThank you for comparing the Core 2 Duo E6850 and Q6600 in this article. One of my pet peeves is I upgrade every 3-4 years and its really hard to assess performance over these so-called legacy parts. I only upgrade if I get double the processor performance (PC 2005) of the processor to be replaced for the same price.
I personally would go with the A8 for a HTPC or offline private PC because of its better graphic performance and hardware accelerated graphics converters.
najames - Saturday, August 27, 2011 - link
I second that motion!! I still use a lot of older hardware and found it interesting to see it all listed too.rockfella79 - Tuesday, July 31, 2012 - link
I still don't feel i need to upgrade from my E5200 and 2 GB DDR2 hohoho.