B01NCE8T92

Used for a Budget media PC. great value. Perfect for basic computing needs.

awesome product, does more work than is expected for the value.

Runs like a champ.

Great processor for the money.

Everything perfect

Please note that as I write this – March 2017 – this CPU is not in-stock through Amazon and third-party sellers are pricing well above MSRP. You should be buying this for no more than $60-$65 and may be able to find it a few bucks cheaper. My review is based on that price point.

While Intel’s CPU releases are typically driven by excitement at the high-end, in the case of the 7th-gen release of Kaby Lake, there’s not much to get excited about; performance improvements mostly are due to small clock speed increases compared to 6th gen plus built-in support for 4K video playback for sites like Netflix. However, near the bottom of the desktop product stack is the Pentium G4560, a $60 dual core hyper-threaded CPU that offers nearly the same performance as the i3-6100 at half the price. Why is this so exciting?

It may not be a true quad-core, but for $60, you’re getting a modern CPU that has very good performance in basic computing tasks, but also one that can run modern AAA gaming titles when paired with a quality discrete GPU. If your goal is to run AAA titles at 60 FPS, this CPU paired with an RX 470 (or 480 if you want a little more future headroom) is about the best deal I’ve seen in PC gaming the past 5 years. I personally picked up my CPU for $55 using a $5 eBay coupon and got an RX 480 4GB for $140 after MIR from a competitor site. For under $200 combined for the GPU and CPU, I got performance roughly equivalent to what an i3-4150 with a GTX970 provides, and those would’ve set you back nearly $450 a couple years ago! You can see my 3DMark Firestrike score in the photos, which shows this PC beating 58% of other tested computers. That’s amazing for a machine that cost $500. For the curious, this set-up can hold steady 60 FPS at High or Ultra on most titles, including Battlefield 1, Dishonored 2, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Note that the CPU hits its bottleneck before an RX480 or GTX1060 will, so it isn’t worth pairing this CPU with anything more powerful than one of those. The RX470 is actually the most equivalent and appropriate GPU, but with 480 prices so low, it may be worth picking up one of those instead.

If you’re building a computer for basic computing tasks, this is an excellent choice. It offers more than enough muscle to multi-task, whether that means spotify plus MS office, leaving a ton of Chrome tasks open while watching YouTube, or multiple Excel workbooks. If you’re building a budget Gaming PC, this is a perfect entry point CPU. It allows you to pick up a motherboard with a full range of features, and upgrade later to a 6th or 7th gen i5 or i7 if you choose to do so.

New budget king. In most all games it is a perfect match for rx480 / gtx1060 or any less powerful card than those listed above. Tested battlefield 1 that is a very cpu intensive game I get about 95 fps with my asus 4gb rx480. This cpu cannot be touched for 64$ as of now. Has no problems running any games at 1080 ultra. No complaints.
This processor is the best value because its the cheapest processor intel offers with “hyper threading” technology. What this means is while it does indeed have 2 physical cores being a dual core, it has 4 threads. In other words it can take 4 directions at once and mimic a quad core processor. Why is this important? Because most modern games use the resources of a quad core processor and this acts like one thus getting the best of both worlds in terms of price and performance. Also worth noting this processor is amazing as well for non gamers. It is very snappy and responsive. Intel likely included this hyper threading technology at this price point because of the upcoming threat AMD Ryzen cpu family. This makes us ”the consumer” win. Absolutely recommended.

I just build my first computer using this processor. Due to the relatively cheap price (as far as pc builds go), I wasn’t expecting too much punch in how fast everything moves. I was very pleased to discover it was way more than I was actually aiming for the in the first place. This wasn’t going to be a gaming PC, but instead for general use. However, it ended up being able to play most games just fine, as long as the settings were low. Some games like Portal 2, however, ran perfectly on the highest settings.

Overall, I’m super happy with the speed of this processor given the price. Highly recommended for anyone who doesn’t want to have to deal with any computer lag.