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Best Gaming CPU: Budget

Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: May 2012
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Best Gaming CPU for ~£50:

Pentium G630

Pentium G630
Codename: Sandy Bridge
Process: 32 nm
CPU Cores/Threads: 2
Clock Speed: 2.7 GHz
Socket: LGA 1155
L2 Cache: 2 x 256 KB
L3 Cache: 3 MB
Thermal Envelope:
65 W

It turns out that the budget-oriented Sandy Bridge-based Pentium family performs very well in games. Specifically, Intel's £50 Pentium G630 beat the FX-4100, -6100, and -8120 in our recent sub-£160 CPU gaming comparison. In fact, it finished right on par with the Phenom II X4 955.

As a result, Intel displaces AMD at the bottom rung of our recommendation list yet again this month. That's something we haven't seen for a very long while. There's not much else to add, except that if you consider the Phenom II to be a capable gaming CPU, Intel's Pentium G630 is just as viable.

Best Gaming CPU for £70:

Pentium G860

Pentium G860
Codename: Sandy Bridge
Process: 32 nm
CPU Cores/Threads: 2
Clock Speed: 3.0 GHz
Socket: LGA 1155
L2 Cache: 2 x 256 KB
L3 Cache: 3 MB
Thermal Envelope:
65 W

An extra £20 buys you 300 MHz more compared to the £70 Pentium G630.

This makes enough of a performance difference to push today's £70 processor recommendation out in front of AMD's Phenom II X4 955 in our sub-£160 CPU gaming comparison. Because the LGA 1155-based Core i3s and Pentiums are unfortunately crippled by locked multiplier ratios, paying a little extra for more stock frequency could be worth the added cost in this case.

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  • 1 Hide
    aje21 , 19 May 2012 03:08
    Would be interested to see where a Cedar Trail D2700 would place (i.e. where at the bottom of the table) as this seems not to have been bench tested much.
    Also, it would be great to see tags on the table for the recommendations and commended chips...
  • 0 Hide
    tracker45 , 21 May 2012 05:15
    is x2 250 any good ?
  • 0 Hide
    Duzzi , 28 May 2012 03:17
    i5 2500k would be unrivaled if it had pci 3.0 support, if it is an advantage at all, at least for now.
  • -1 Hide
    amstar , 31 May 2012 17:30
    Sorry but you folks at Tom's Hardware don't seem to have a clue in regards to recommending processors.

    The ONLY 3 CPUs worth mentioning should be:

    Celeron G530 (£32) -- BARELY 10% slower than the more expensive Pentiums, and yet you completely ignore it in favour of the useless Pentiums?

    Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition (£75) -- (if you REALLY want to tell me a crappy Pentium is going to go anywhere near an overclocked Phenom with full 4 cores then you're living in Intel's cuckoo land). The FX 4100 mention is worthless since the 965 will mop the floor with it and at a lower clockrate.

    Intel i5 2500K (£150) -- nothing above this processor is even worth mentioning besides the 3570K, and you proved yet again how clueless you were by even mentioning the 3930K and its "four channel memory subsystem", when it has a memory controller that's significantly slower than that of the 2500K, let alone the IMC of the new Ivy Bridge CPUs.

    Terrible review.