Intel Outs Kaby Lake Pentium CPUs With Hyper-Threading
Intel outed the addition of Hyper-Threading (HT) to its Kaby Lake Pentium series with little aplomb at CES; instead, the company mentioned the new capability in passing during our briefing.
The Pentium series traditionally consists of low-power, dual-core offerings with no HT. Pentiums serve as the low-end alternative to the i3 series, which features dual-core offerings with HT enabled. The addition of HT to the Pentium series expands its range, but there are still a few key differentiators compared to the i3 series.
The Pentium G4620 and G4600 have a 51W TDP, which is the same as their i3 "equivalents," whereas the G4560 has a 54W TDP, which is higher than all of the i3 SKUs (with the exception of the 60W unlocked i3-7350K). The Pentium G4600T and G4560T slot in as the low power Pentium offerings with a 35W TDP. The i3 "T" SKUs feature the same 35W TDP.
Intel's Pentium base clocks, which range from 2.9-3.7GHz, are also lower than their i3 counterparts. They also only feature 3MB of cache compared to the 4MB found in the i3 series (except i3-71xx models, which have 3MB of cache). The Pentium offerings provide the same HD Graphics 630 as the i3, though the two G4560 and G4560T SKUs step back to the HD Graphics 610.0
The Pentium series also forgoes support for the Advanced Vector Instructions 2 (AVX2) instruction set, which the i3 series supports. Some heavy enterprise workloads, such as databases, and more mundane video processing applications (among others), tend to use the AVX2 instruction set to boost performance, but it is unlikely that the omission will drastically affect a typical user.
Pricing is the key difference between the two, as the Kaby Lake chips command a ~$53-$63 premium. The lower price point makes the Pentium lineup very attractive for a number of low-power applications, including low-end gaming rigs, and the HD630/610 brings some multimedia-centric use-cases into view as well.
The HT-enabled Pentiums create a challenge to AMD's line of low-end processors, and of course, some will speculate that it appears that Intel is bolstering its low-end products in the face of AMD's pending Ryzen onslaught. In either case, the HT-powered Pentiums add a welcome new wrinkle to the low end. The processors are listed on Intel's ARK but are currently available only for preorder.
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UPDATE: 1/12/17 - clarified i3 cache
Paul Alcorn is the Editor-in-Chief for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.
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TJ Hooker The $65 G4560 looks interesting for super budget builds. At 3.5 GHz, it offers 95% of the performance of an i3-6100 for 56% of the price (based on MSRP), and the i3-6100 is still a fairly decent 1080p CPU.Reply -
mjslakeridge Reply19139407 said:The data formatting below the CPUs is completely messed up.
Must be a problem with your browser. Looks fine to me on Chrome.
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Multipack G4560 will be a good bargain chip for sure. Almost difficult for Intel to justify the i3's and Pentium's now though.Reply -
mjslakeridge Reply19139692 said:G4560 will be a good bargain chip for sure. Almost difficult for Intel to justify the i3's and Pentium's now though.
Maybe Intel has decided that it has to be it's own competition, since AMD hasn't done much lately! I know AMD has a new series coming out, but we will have to see.
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photonboy i3-7350K is at a weird price point. It's overclockable, but then you'd want a better motherboard which adds a bit to the price.Reply
However, if you get the cheaper motherboard and an i5-7xxx CPU it might make more sense for a similar price. -
Multipack Reply19139752 said:19139692 said:G4560 will be a good bargain chip for sure. Almost difficult for Intel to justify the i3's and Pentium's now though.
Maybe Intel has decided that it has to be it's own competition, since AMD hasn't done much lately! I know AMD has a new series coming out, but we will have to see.
:lol: Now this is funny. Yeah Intel had to turn on themselves! That says it all about AMD..
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iPanda so with HT... will these chips be able to play far cry 3+ or other similar games? or does it have to be 4 actual cores. i don't remember... that's the only detail I would be hesitant from a gaming standpoint; as that would gimp certain games from even running (apparently). But for regular browsing and such, great.Reply -
Multipack Well it's the same as an i3, so hardly a gaming chip, but would probably handle a 1050Ti or RX460 pretty well.Reply