Intel Pentium G850 Sandy Bridge CPU

Legit Reviews has the 2.9GHz Intel Pentium G850 Sandy Bridge processor strapped to the review bench for a round or two of benchmarks. Here's a quote from the full review:

After trying out both the Intel Pentium G620 and Pentium G850 we must admit that we are still impressed by what these cost effective mainstream processors can do. Thanks to the powerful Intel 'Sandy Bridge' microarchitecture these dual-core processors don't run too far behind the more expensive offerings from Intel and AMD.

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Those pentium would be kick ass chips if Intel didn't block overclocking on them

Ahh reminds me of my Pentium e2160 1,8 Ghz @ 3,0 using stock voltage

Michaelius said:

Those pentium would be kick ass chips if Intel didn't block overclocking on them

Ahh reminds me of my Pentium e2160 1,8 Ghz @ 3,0 using stock voltage

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And it looks like at least *some* of Intel's volume resellers (like MicroCenter) are decidedly wary of these pocket flamethrowers - MC's $40 savings on LGA1155 mobo/CPU combos don't include the Pentium G (which means that i3-2100, which isn't overclockable either, undercuts even G620 by $10 when bought with a motherboard).

As it is, i3 has two advantages over any of the G series, even stock - HTT and no memory underclocking (the G series has the memory clock locked at 1066 MHz).

Still, with two MicroCenters near me, $10 saved is $10 saved.

PGHammer said:

Still, with two MicroCenters near me, $10 saved is $10 saved.

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Please don't make me angry by mentioning microcenter.

I already get pissed off when i think about US prices versus Euro pricing and microcenter deals just add insult to injury

Michaelius said:

Those pentium would be kick ass chips if Intel didn't block overclocking on them

Ahh reminds me of my Pentium e2160 1,8 Ghz @ 3,0 using stock voltage

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My thoughts exactly.

These budget CPU's used to be how I could afford to have a reasonably fast computer in college.

My 650Mhz Duron kicked ass at 950Mhz.

Now they are just not as interesting.

Sure they are cheap, but why not stick with your old rig?

I can't help but think there has to be some way of modding sandy bridge CPU's to unlock the multiplier, just how we used to with Socket A CPUs back in the day, by connecting some traces on the top of the package.

Zarathustra[H];1037606826 said:

I can't help but think there has to be some way of modding sandy bridge CPU's to unlock the multiplier, just how we used to with Socket A CPUs back in the day, by connecting some traces on the top of the package.

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it only has one clockgen, unlike the old ones, which had two. I can think of a possibility, we only lose PCIe bus -.-

Since PCIe bus has no adjustable multipliers, either

Can we "pin mod" it to do 4.2Ghz?

*thinks of using recent days of using some metal foil and making a Q6600 do 3GHz*

TinFoil? My Q6600 is still running at 3.6Ghz without it...would it give me more head room?

Rauelius said:

TinFoil? My Q6600 is still running at 3.6Ghz without it...would it give me more head room?

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oh hell it's easier than I remember it being... just put tape over one of the pins! (I think it was like a E2180 other Pentium Dual-Core that you needed the foil to connect two pins together)

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=58361

All it did was change the cpu bus from 266MHz to 333Mhz.

(so... stock is 266x9=2.4Ghz stock, 333x9=3GHz)

I'm assuming you just did 400x9 and called it a day, so no, it won't help you at all.

Michaelius said:

Those pentium would be kick ass chips if Intel didn't block overclocking on them

Ahh reminds me of my Pentium e2160 1,8 Ghz @ 3,0 using stock voltage

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Yeah I had my e2180 @ 3.1 stock voltage, they still aren't bad for a budget gaming rig to this day. These new ones are nice (along with i3's) but can they really keep up with a quad amd setup overclocked (which costs the same, I love your microcenter)? I'm genuinely curious as I haven't seen any benchmarks.

Hmm i3 2100 is a tiny bit faster than Amd quads in gaming so those probably fall slightly behind them.

Michaelius said:

Hmm i3 2100 is a tiny bit faster than Amd quads in gaming so those probably fall slightly behind them.

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I'n gaming you are usually going to be GPU limited at most resolutions and settings you really want to play at anyway, so I doubt there would be much of a difference.

So here is how I feel about this CPU compared to similarly priced AMD Phenom II offerings:

Pentium G850:
+ Slightly faster at stock clocks (difference not noticeable, and not measurable in games unless quality settings and resolution turned down further than most would play at.)
+ Excellent power usage
+ Great stepping stone to 2500K or 2600K
- Can not overclock
- RAM forced to underclock at 1066mhz.

AMD Phenom II X2 555 BE:
- Slower at stock clocks. (difference not noticeable, and not measurable in games unless quality settings and resolution turned down further than most would play at.)
- Power usage
+ Can be overclocked and core unlocked (I have personally hit 4 cores at 4.2Ghz on air with one of these)

When to buy which:

1.) You have a fixed budget and don't plan on using the CPU as a short term stepping stone until you can afford a faster socket compatible one
a.) You don't overclock: Pentium will be faster get this.
b.) You overclock: AMD has a potential to become a 4.2ghz 4 core beast. get this.

2.) You have a fixed budget and DO plan on using the CPU as a stepping stope until you can afford a socket compatible upgrade:
a.) Bulldozer doesn't excite you: Get the Pentium and later upgrade to a 2500k or 2600K
b.) Bulldozer excites you (despite likely not taking the performance crown): Get Phenom II and an AM3+ motherboard.

3.) You are concerned about power usage: Get the Pentium

This assessment does not include desktop Llano, as quite frankly, I don't ave enough experience with Llano yet to know which way to go.

really good CPU, but the review method is not satisfactory, and also the conclusion at said article is a bit misleading for non-enthusiast.

Zarathustra[H];1037609633 said:

I'n gaming you are usually going to be GPU limited at most resolutions and settings you really want to play at anyway, so I doubt there would be much of a difference.

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[H] really needs to put that myth to rest:

Michaelius said:

[H] really needs to put that myth to rest:

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Wow. I have never played the Witcher, but it must go unusually hard on the CPU.

No game I have played on any of my machines in the last 3 years or so (Phenom II X6 and Core i7-920) has come even close to loading my CPUs and I've always gotten 60+ FPS out of them.

That being said, its well known that SLI and Crossfire (particularly SLI) solutions put higher load on the CPU than single GPU solutions. the SLI in that 590 probably added to the CPU load, and its unlikely someone would put a video card like that in a low end Athlon X2. I would have expected a higher end 4 core Phenom II or higher to be able to handle it though.

Also, do you know what OS, these benchmarks were run on, and how recent they are?

CPU use in games is a little bit different today than it was even 2-3 months ago. Both AMD ans Nvidias drivers have recently received for DX11 multithreading support, taking advantage of multi-core CPU's for rendering better than before. DX9 only systems, like XP don't take advantage of this, but running DX9 in an up to date DX11 capable Vista or 7 systems with the latest GPU drivers do.

Either way, that's interesting data. I've never seen a chart with any game before showing sub 60fps on semi-recent CPU's that wasn't GPU limited.

Zarathustra[H];1037610333 said:

Wow. I have never played the Witcher, but it must go unusually hard on the CPU.

No game I have played on any of my machines in the last 3 years or so (Phenom II X6 and Core i7-920) has come even close to loading my CPUs and I've always gotten 60+ FPS out of them.

That being said, its well known that SLI and Crossfire (and particularly SLI) solutions put higher load on the CPU than single GPU solutions. the SLI in that 590 probably added to the CPU load, and its unlikely someone would put a video card like that in a low end Athlon X2. I would have expected a higher end 4 core Phenom II or higher to be able to handle it though.

Also, do you know what OS, these benchmarks were run on, and how recent they are?

CPU use in games is a little bit different today than it was even 2-3 months ago. Both AMD ans Nvidias drivers have recently received for DX11 multithreading support, taking advantage of multi-core CPU's for rendering better than before. DX9 only systems, like XP don't take advantage of this, but running DX9 in an up to date DX11 capable Vista or 7 systems with the latest GPU drivers do.

Either way, that's interesting data. I've never seen a chart with any game before showing sub 60fps on semi-recent CPU's that wasn't GPU limited.

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witcher, it appears is single or two threads only I

I notice they didn't dare test the Intel dual cores So... we'll never know if the lower L3 cache of the Intel dual cores, the seperate IMC of the clarksdales will affect performance.