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Best Gaming CPU: Budget

Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: August 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. There's not much else to add, except that if you consider the Phenom II X4 to be a capable gaming CPU, Intel's Pentium G630 is just as viable.

Best Gaming CPU for £70:

Pentium G870

Pentium G870
Codename: Sandy Bridge
Process: 32 nm
CPU Cores/Threads: 2
Clock Speed: 3.1 GHz
Socket: LGA 1155
L2 Cache: 2 x 256 KB
L3 Cache: 3 MB
Thermal Envelope:
65 W

The extra £20 you spend beyond the Pentium G630 buys an additional 400 MHz and DDR3-1333 memory support in the Pentium G870. Because the LGA 1155-based Core i3s and Pentiums are unfortunately crippled by locked multiplier ratios, paying a little more for a higher clock rate is worth the cost, we think. At 3.1 GHz, the Pentium G870 is actually a capable budget gaming processor.

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  • 0 Hide
    brianthesnail , 31 August 2012 04:42
    ive just upgraded from the pentium E5700 to the pentium G620.. and for the price (£40) i am impressed.... granted its limited with no hyperthreading or turbo but along with 4gb of 1333mhz ram and a GTX550ti im running the latest games without any probs......
    its great to see toms hardware recommending these low end cpu,s ,however they may be low end but they have mid range performance... as the review above stated they can take on the FX4100 and even the 8 core bulldozers.. and can keep up with a quad core phenom..... i dont know how intel have acheived this but this allows guys like myself with limited budgets to build budget gaming rigs on a shoestring.....
    its nice to watch these channels on youtube with quad crossfire and overclocked i7,s but unless you have a 40K+ yearly salary or your folks are mega rich this kind of hardware is way out of your reach...
    theres many decent sites that can recommend good budget hardware but "toms hardware" is the best source of information anywhere online.... the best cpu and gpu monthly reports are second to none and this was the basis of my choice to go with the G620.....
  • 2 Hide
    MajinCry , 31 August 2012 23:50
    Eh. I upgraded from an E6700 to an AMD Phenom II X4 965 and it's awesome. It has literally doubled my frame-rates, and I can now play things like Skyrim and Fallout 3 with max render distances, loads of NPCs and shizzle with no slow-downs. Got everything throttled at 40FPS, and it's silky smooth. Cost me £80, £170 if you include Mobo and RAM.
  • 0 Hide
    jemm , 3 September 2012 06:08
    Good to see people confirming in real world the tips from Tom´s!
  • 0 Hide
    jay_nar2012 , 5 September 2012 04:04
    I love how the picture for this thread (when you are about to click on it) has just AMD cpus in it....