The Sandy Bridge Pentium Review: G850, G840, G620 & G620T Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 23, 2011 12:11 AM ESTThe Matchup
The Sandy Bridge Pentiums go head to head with AMD's Athlon II and to a lesser extent the new triple-core AMD A6. At the low end we have the Athlon II X2 260 vs. Intel's Pentium G620. AMD has the clock speed advantage (3.2GHz vs. 2.6GHz) but Sandy Bridge does offer better performance at the same clock, we'll have to see if the 600MHz advantage is too much for Intel to overcome.
Moving on up AMD gets to throw more cores at the competition. The Athlon II X3 455 (3.3GHz) has three cores to the Pentium G840's two (2.8GHz), although the clock speed advantage shrinks a bit.
Finally compared to the Pentium G850 we have two options from AMD. If you can find one there's the Athlon II X4 635. The clock speed advantage goes away completely but AMD delivers twice the cores of Intel's Pentium G850. The 635 is no longer on AMD's price list so your chances of finding one at a reasonable price go down considerably. The Athlon II X3 460 is the only other similarly priced competitor, and its performance should be similar to the 455 I mentioned above.
Meet the A6
Although at a slightly higher price point than the most expensive Sandy Bridge Pentium, we also have a lower cost member of the Llano family: AMD's A6-3650. For $20 less than the flagship 3850, the A6-3650 loses 300MHz on the CPU clock and lops off 80 GPU cores. The GPU also runs at a slower 443MHz frequency. The TDP remains unchanged at 100W. Given the small price difference between a 3650 and a 3850 I'd much rather opt for the latter but we'll see what the slower GPU does to performance when every dollar counts.
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dingetje - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - link
AMD Athlon II X3 455 = 80 bucksIntel G620 = 78 bucks
nuff said
kmmatney - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - link
You can overclock the AMD processor, though. You can get an Athlon X2 560 black edition, plus a motherboard for $89 at Microcenter (and the last one I bought unlocked to 4 cores). The Phenom II processors can often be had for low prices - they should have included at least one Phenom II in the benchmarks.dingetje - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - link
lol, with nuff said i meant:they are priced the same and with 3 overclockable cores the AMD is way better deal
ET - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - link
As you can see, it's apparently not obvious that's the better deal. I agree the AMD is better for enthusiasts. It's worse for people who care about power consumption, and it will be worse for gaming (though perhaps not significantly so if you use an inexpensive GPU).yankeeDDL - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - link
ET, there's a "Best gaming CPU for the money" article on Tom's hardware: go and see that every CPU up to the Core i5 2400 is AMD.This translates into: if you are into gaming on a budget, there's only one choice.
I agree on your comment on power efficiency: Intel is unrivaled and if your highest priority is power consumption, then the Pentiums are unbeatable.
Of course, the differences measured, are completely irrelevant in a home environment: it may make a difference of $3, $4 in one year, if even. The only place this would really matter to the point that it could be a priority, is for large enterprises. Then again, this is not the entry-level PC for Mr Joe Average.
It is absolutely normal for Intel to use its brand name to charge more, for inferior products. I'm sure AMD would do the same if could. This doesn't change the fact though that if you're after getting the most for your hard earned $$$, if you're after the best price/performance ratio, you cannot possibly choose Intel.
frozentundra123456 - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - link
I think you had better re-read that chart, yankee, or look at toms today and see the new chart. Intel is well represented all the way to the lowest level:85.00: Athlon II x3 455
100.00: Tie, Phenom II x4 840, Pentium G850
125.00: i3 2100
190.00: i5 2400
220.00: i5 2500K
325.00: i7 2600K
I didnt include an "honorable mention" because the article is "best for the money" but at 120.00 AMD did have an honorable mention for one of the quad core phenoms.
But if you only look at the clear winning categories 125.00 and under, AMD has 2 and intel has 2.
above 125.00 it is all intel. So if you are gaming on a budget, you do have a choice. Intel is tied or ahead except at the very lowest price point.
yankeeDDL - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - link
Hi Frozentundr,I have read the article very well and what you wrote confirms this exactly: like I said, if you're looking for gaming on a budget, you look at the cheapest CPUs that give you the best "bang" for the bucks.
If you read the comment about the G850: "However, it only offers half of the execution cores as AMD's alternative, and it doesn't even have the Hyper-Threading technology needed to logically address four threads".
Translated: you save on power, but the G850 can be set to choke much easier than a Phenom II X4. I hope you would agree.
You're right about the Core i3: I skipped it when posting my note, but the conclusion totally stands: the lowest priced gaming CPU worth recommending, are AMD.
The Core i3 is an option indeed if you're willing to spend some more on CPU, motherboard, and forsake overclocking as well, but we are already talking about a CPU more than 50% more costly than the Athlon II X3, so calling it "entry level" would be a bit of a stretch.
frozentundra123456 - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - link
All I was saying is that your original statement was not correct. Intel does have processers listed in the lower end. Now it seems you are changing the conditions of the argument to make your point. You are talking about only the "absolute lowest" price. And as every AMD fan eventually brings up, you can get more cores.Personally, I would even agree with you that I probably would prefer a quad core AMD to a Pentium for sure, maybe even to the i3 2100. But that is not the point. The point is that Intel does have competitive processors in the low end, based on what Tom's said, not on my evaluation.
And I would consider the difference between an 80.00 and 125.00 processor not that significant. I mean, that is the price of one game, or one dinner out for a couple of people.
Bottom line, I dont see how you can call intel processors "overpriced rubbish" based on Toms article. And I am not an intel fan. My first real gaming was done on a single core Athlon XP 2600, but I am just getting tired of AMD continuing to push out CPUs using an outdated architecture.
ypsylon - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - link
Well I want to build super-duper cheap m-ATX/ITX PC. That slowest of them,G620T, running at 2.2 GHz looks like a good deal. 35W is great when you look at modern CPUs. Perfect for small box which will do trivial task like recording audio tracks or downloading torrents through the night. All of that with min. power drain. And most important thing all of those Pentiums are not as useless as Atoms. What is nice in Atoms [and likes] is only power drain, but performance is highly insufficient even for many trivial jobs. I don't need OC, well to be honest I would love to see VT-d, but heck you can always install XP (it still alive and kicking, and I couldn't care less about M$ propaganda) only or Linux!One thing which I'm not too sure about is the testing procedure. Those CPUs are not targeted at gaming or video editing.
Captmorgan09 - Tuesday, August 23, 2011 - link
I built up a WHS box running a G620T along with 4GB of RAM and 4 1.5TB WD black edition drives in RAID 5. It's not the speediest machine in the block but it runs cool and does the job. The only issue I had was the asus board I bought didn't support the G620T out of the box. Had to take the board to work and use an i5 so that I could boot and update the BIOS.