
Processor: Intel Pentium G850
Intel’s Sandy Bridge-based Pentiums deliver amazing performance for budget-minded gamers right out of their boxes. But their overall potency is capped by two processing cores, a locked multiplier ratio, and a lack of value-added extras like Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading.
Although it's a slap in the face to many enthusiasts, what you see here is what you get. At least the 2.9 GHz Pentium G850 offers great performance per clock, low power consumption, 3 MB of shared L3 cache, and DDR3-1333 memory support. More important still, its $70 price tag freed up resources we could spend on other system components.
Read Customer Reviews of Intel's Pentium G850
Cooler: Intel's Boxed Heat Sink And Fan
Intel's boxed cooler consists of a familiar orb-style aluminum heat sink, a low-speed PWM-controlled fan, and a push-pin mounting bracket. It's quiet, which we like, and wholly sufficient given this platform's complete inability to overclock.
- Squeezing More Bang From The Same Buck
- CPU And Cooler
- Motherboard And Memory
- Graphics Card And Hard Drive
- Case, Power Supply, And Optical Drive
- Assembling Our Budget-Oriented Box
- Limited Overclocking Strikes Again
- Test System Configuration And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: Synthetics
- Benchmark Results: Battlefield 3
- Benchmark Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Benchmark Results: F1 2012
- Benchmark Results: Audio And Video
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Power Consumption And Temperatures
- Is This Our Best $500 Gamer Ever?

Exactly. Couldn't've said it better.
Linux for a gaming desktop I dont think so.
What about the Phenom II 965? It's only $75 at TigerDirect.
I think they'd be better off with a B75 motherboard, 4GB RAM and an i3-3220.
Exactly. Couldn't've said it better.
It's too expensive.
This was a hardware test. You're OS complaints are irrelevant and there's no practical difference between Home and Pro versions when it comes to simple performance tests. such as these.
Several Linux distros works pretty well with most modern popular games, just FYI. Also, getting Windows for free legally is easy if you care to do it. Dreamspark has many free versions available to college students and most people know at least one, even if by proxy. Even in the unlikelihood of not knowing any, there's still the eval copies that MS gives away for free on their own website.
I disagree. The current drivers for Windows 8 are pretty much on-par with the Windows 7 drivers. Heck, they're better than AMD's pre-Catalyst 12.6 drivers.
Meh, I would've preferred seeing at least an A8-5600K with a cheaper motherboard and memory kit or keep the same memory kit and get a cheaper case. It could have fit, IDK why Tom's didn't do it. Maybe there weren't good prices on other components at the time
Windows home still costs $100 which is still some how not part of the budget.