Conclusion

The commotion caused by the launch of processors on Sandy Bridge microarchitecture created very high expectations for the new Pentium processors. However, Intel had a different plan: these dual-core processors priced below $100 weren’t supposed to disturb the low-end market situation in any way. That is why the average performance of Pentium G850, G840 and G620 is only a little higher than that of previous-generation Pentium processors manufactured for LGA775 and LGA1156 systems. It was achieved by stripping them of some features typical of other more expensive LGA1155 processors.

The new Pentium processors do not support Hyper-Threading and new vector instructions, work at lower clock speeds and do not have Quick Sync. Nevertheless, Sandy Bridge is such an advanced microarchitecture, that it is simply impossible to cut off its entire advantages even if you really wanted to. Therefore, there are certain cases when the new Pentium processors will be way ahead of their predecessors and competitors.

First of all, Pentium G850, G840 and G620 perform impressively fast in games for a product of their price. They will be a great fit for inexpensive gaming machines, as their advantage over dual-core Socket AM3, LGA1156 and LGA775 CPUs is more than obvious.

Secondly, we can definitely recommend these CPUs for HTPC. Despite the declared TDP of 65 W, in reality they are very energy-efficient. In this aspect they are comparable with 35 W Core i3 CPUs from the specific energy-efficient T-series. The same is true about performance. The new Pentium processors on average work just as fast as Core i3-2100T. Their only weakness is video transcoding tasks, where Core i3 may be significantly faster due to Quick Sync support.

Summing everything up we have to welcome the new Pentium processors into this world. They make contemporary Intel platform extremely attractive and expand its application field. It’s been a while since Intel offered a good versatile platform, and LGA1155 has finally got a chance to become one.