Next generation Pentium will have HT support

S

-Sweeper_

Limp Gawd
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Pentium G4560, the entry level Pentium CPU for the Kaby Lake-S family (Pentium G4400's successor) will support HT - based on a leaked Geekbench result. This means the entire Pentium lineup gets 2C/4T treatment from now on! Clocked at 3.5 GHz it should almost match Core i3-6100 (3.7 GHz) performance at much lower prices, as low as $60-70 if we look at current Pentium G4400 prices.

Geekbench said:
Intel Pentium G4560 @ 3.50 GHz
1 processor, 2 cores, 4 threads
Click to expand...

https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/1112633
 
About time, now it just needs AVX2 as well if they didn't add that yet :)
 
What reasons would you still have to go with an i3 once this comes out?
 
i3 doesn't have instruction set extensions disabled (AVX 1.0/2.0, FMA), has QuickSync and likely has models with faster iGPU clock speeds (even if only used for GPGPU).

How good of a deal it is really depends on the cost. shopblt's removed page for the boxed Intel BX80677G4560 had a price of around $68, but I'm not sure if that is a real price or not because shopblt. If those CPU extensions and QuickSync are important to you, some i3 processors are only around $115 and are faster than the G4560. ~$70 vs $115 for the CPU could be significant for an ultra low end system.

For comparison, here is an i3-6100 vs that Pentium G4560: https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/compare/1152395?baseline=1112633

tl;dr ~15% single/multi performance difference, Pentium gets killed on SGEMM because it lacks AVX/FMA. Is it worth the price difference? Probably not unless you use QuickSync often.
 
I don't think Intel would do that, unless it's a BGA part. Then it'd make sense.

HT'd Pentium would bulldoze through their i3 sales. And let's face it, most of Intel's volume are Cellys/Pentiums/I3's on client PCs.
 
Starbomba said:
I don't think Intel would do that, unless it's a BGA part. Then it'd make sense.

HT'd Pentium would bulldoze through their i3 sales. And let's face it, most of Intel's volume are Cellys/Pentiums/I3's on client PCs.
Click to expand...
According to screenshots of CPU-Z, the Pentium G45xx/G46xx series is LGA1151. Further confirmation comes from that geekbench link, which shows the G4560 running on an Asus LGA1151 motherboard. https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/B150M-A/specifications/

I don't think it would make a big dent in i3 sales overall. While enthusiasts are mostly concerned with channel tray and boxed parts that end up in end users' hands for building desktop PCs, that's actually a very small part of Intel's CPU sales.

Large OEMs don't pay anything close to retail MSRP for processors. Since interesting G45xx/G46xx CPUs are desktop parts, and desktops have been in steeper and steeper decline, it might steal a small percentage of sales from desktop i3 systems.

The price difference for large OEMs between a low end i3 and Pentium w/HT might only be ~$10. An "i3" system carries a premium over low end Pentium systems by far more than that. Not only would OEMs likely limit availability of those faster Pentium chips, Intel may also do that too (for multiple reasons, including salvage for die with specific defects or binning at lower clock speeds).

I think the situation gets a lot more interesting in mobile since a mobile Pentium w/HT clearly would eat into an important bread and butter product for Intel like the mobile i3.
 
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