Too slow on any front to consider buying
G-Police
CPU performance still quicker than
A10-5800K, low power consumption
G-Unit
Rubbish on board GPU; tangibly slower than
Core i3-3220
How much?
Price: $108
Manufacturer: www.intel.com
If Intel’s Core i3 chips are too expensive,
the Pentium G2120 offers the next step down the lvy Bridge ladder. At just $108,
it’s the cheapest chip on test, competing with AMD’s A8-5600K, and at first
glance, it differs only slightly from its more auspicious brethren. The G2120
boasts two 3.1 GHz lvy Bridge cores but, as with the i3 chips, no Turbo Boost
support. There’s no Hyper-Threading for the Pentium chip either; just the two
physical cores.
The Pentium G2120’s on board graphics is
also a step down. Its Intel HD graphics chip matches the HD 2500 graphics of
the Core i3-3220, with six execution units clocked between 650MHz and 1,050MHz
and DirectX 11 support, but it lacks many of Intel’s extra features. This means
there’s limited virtualization support, no Quick Sync, no Wireless Display and
no Clear Video HD Technology. Basically, it’s an Intel chip with the clever stuff
you almost never use removed. With a lower clock speed and fewer features than
its stablemates, not surprisingly, the Pentium G2120 is also light on power,
with a TDP of only 55W.
With only a 200 MHz step down in per-clock
performance in comparison to the Core i3-3220, the Pentium G2120 accounts for
itself well in our Media Benchmarks, with an image editing score of 1,510
points only 30 points behind the Core i3s and 50 per cent faster than even
the 88 A10-5800K. However, the lack of Hyper-Threading impacted video
encoding performance. With a score of 1,660 points being the slowest of any
chip on test; even the A10-5700 was 139 points quicker. Thank fully, the
Pentium G2120 recovered in the multi-tasking test, with a score of 1,329 again
eclipsing the AMD competition. The Pentium G2120’s flaws showed elsewhere,
though, with the lowest scores by a large margin in the multi-threaded
workloads of wPrime 32M and Cinebench.
Also, as it boasts only six execution units
in its HD Graphics unit, the G2120 was just as poor as its team- mates in
games. A minimum frame rate of 4fps in Skyrim is a sixth of that achieved by
the A8 -5600K. Performance with a discrete GPU was better, though, with a 49fps
minimum in Crysis 2 bettering the A10-5800K; it’s also 4 per cent slower than
the Core i3-3220. Meanwhile, the peak power consumption of 73W under full load
was also very good, and comfortably the lowest on test.
Conclusion
While it has a tempting low price, the
Pentium G2120’s flaws are clear. Alongside its poor GPU is its limited
multi-threaded performance, which cripples video encoding and similarly
intensive tasks, making it ill-suited as a stand-alone chip. The A10-5800K and
Core i3-3220 are pricier, butter suited to their roles.
Scores
§
Speed: 39 / 45
§
Features: 7 / 30
§
Value: 30 / 25
