The Best Sub-£100 CPU

Intel Pentium G840

Manufacturer: Intel
UK price (as reviewed): £64.99 (inc VAT)
US price (as reviewed): $84.99 (ex tax)

Intel Pentium G850

Manufacturer: Intel
UK price (as reviewed): £70.38 (inc VAT)
US price (as reviewed): $87.99 (ex tax)

The Intel Pentium G840 and Pentium G850 are both based on the same dual-core Sandy Bridge design and have a TDP of 65W. They also sport the same DirectX 10.1-compliant Intel HD Graphics integrated graphics processor, which runs at 850MHz in each of the CPUs.

As well as this, they also share the same amounts of L1, L2 and L3 cache. Their rated clock speeds – the G840 runs at 2.8GHz while the G850 runs at 2.9GHz – are the only discernable differences. Lacking Intel’s new K designation, their frequency multipliers are locked. Intel’s low-end processors have a history of being overclocking monsters – not this time, though, as Intel clearly wants to drive PC enthusiasts towards its more expensive processors.

We weren’t surprised to see that both CPUs offered comparable performance. They were similarly slow in WPrime and Cinebench 11.5, with the G850 making use of the extra 100MHz of clock speed available to it. Our Media Benchmarks initially told a similar story, as the two processors were again largely inseparable in our image editing test. Thankfully for the G850, this changed in the video encoding test, which is the most CPU-intensive of our media tests, as it managed a healthy 168-point lead over the G840, also bettering it overall. Both processors were slower than the Hyper-Threaded Core i3s, as well as the Phenom X4 955 and Phenom X2 560 BE at their overclocked settings.


Predictably, the two processors capitulated emphatically when using their on-board GPUs and presented with a game to play. You’ll need to buy a graphics card if you plan to game on a system built around either of these CPUs. Performance with our discrete graphics card was reasonable, however, with both CPUs managing a minimum frame rate of at least 34fps in all of our game tests. Again, they performed similarly to each other, although the G850 had a slight advantage in Arma II, which seems to love extra CPU frequency.

The two G800-series CPUs are competent performers in applications but need a graphics card for games. The same isn’t true of the AMD A8-3850, which can play games while also being competent in applications. As a result, the latter is the better buy unless you already own or plan to buy a discrete GPU.

Specifications

• Frequency 2.8GHz (Pentium G840) 2.9GHz (Pentium G850)
  
• Core Sandy Bridge
  
• GPU Intel HD Graphics
  
• Number of cores 2 x physical
  
• Cache L1: 2 x 64KB, L2: 2 x 256KB, L2:3MB
  
• Packaging LGA1155
  
• Thermal design power (TDP) 65W