While researching parts for building a new NAS box recently, I was looking at processor choices and came across the Intel Pentium G4560 processor. This is a 7th generation “Kaby Lake” desktop processor, and while we’d expect the latest processor lineup to command premium prices, the Pentium G4560 is surprisingly very budget friendly.
The Pentium G4560 has more surprises up its sleeves. While Pentium-class desktop processors are often looked upon as the less capable brethren of the Core-series processors, Intel did something unusual with the Pentium G4560. For the first time ever in Pentium-class desktop processors, Intel has enabled hyper-threading on the Pentium G4560.
This brings the Pentium G4560 rather close to the Core i3-7100 in terms of capabilities. Both processors are dual-core with hyper-threading, and thus have the same total 4 numbers of threads. Their prices, however, are almost a world apart, costing US$64 and US$117, at launch, for the Pentium G4560 and Core i3-7100 respectively.
The more expensive Core i3-7100 does have a slight edge in some areas. It is clocked at 3.9 GHz, compared with the Pentium G4560’s 3.5 GHz. It also has a slightly better integrated GPU, feauting the Intel HD Graphics 630 clocked at 1.10 GHz, versus the Pentium G4560’s Intel HD Graphics 610 clocked at 1.05 GHz. It supports Intel Optane memory and AVX 2.0 instructions that the Pentium G4560 does not.
On the other hand, the Pentium G4560 supports ECC memory, which the Core i3-7100 does not.
Much of the edge the Core i3-7100 has over the Pentium G4560 aren’t very significant, particularly when you just need a capable, but not particularly powerful, processor to run some appliance or server that isn’t compute intensive. The important features, like VT-x, VT-d, EPT, SGX, and AES-NI, are all supported.
The Core i3-7100’s 51 W TDP is a slight edge over the Pentium G4560’s 54 W TDP.
For the most part, however, the Pentium G4560’s price, at some 45% discount, is extremely attractive when you want budget hardware.
Many reviewers were impressed with the Pentium G4560, overall. See reviews from: Tom’s Hardware, WccfTech, PC Gamer, and TechSpot. In general, the Pentium G4560 proves to be quite performant, even for games.
I will be using this processor for my NAS PC build. Watch my blog for more posts if you’re interested in my NAS PC build!
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