When you’re building a system around a Pentium processor, Intel’s entry-level H310 will give you everything you need for a basic system. And if you’re shopping for a moderate-budget gaming system, you may consider an H370. In some ways, it’s easier to shop for a motherboard for a high-end build because right off the top you’ll eliminate the low-end chipsets and focus on the feature-rich Z-series. On the contrary, the lower down Intel’s lineup you go, the more motherboard options you get. Intel’s Pentium processors can’t be overclocked, but that doesn’t mean that they lack motherboard options. AMD and Intel both give you everything you need to keep their entry-level processors cool enough for safe operation. Pentium chips have a higher TDP rating than AMD’s Athlon processors, but you can’t overclock them, so they’ll never exceed the factory specifications. Intel’s Pentium Gold processors also come bundled with an Intel heatsink and fan assembly, and there’s really no reason to bother upgrading that cooler except aesthetics. We even found that the stock cooler provided enough cooling capacity to keep our samples at safe temperatures even with the maximum overclock applied. AMD equips the Athlon lineup with a heatsink and fan combo with ample capacity to dissipate the nominal heat output from these low-powered chips. In other words, they don’t require substantial cooling hardware. Cooling RequirementsĪMD’s Athlon 200GE, 220GE and 240GE dual-core processors feature an Low 35W TDP. The moderate clock speed increase doesn’t improve performance dramatically, but if you overclock an Athlon 200GE, you can yield the same performance as an overclocked Athlon 240GE, which reinforces its substantial value. AMD didn’t want to enable overclocking, but with the right motherboard, you can do it anyway. AMD is the clear winner for the overclocking category, because you can’t overclock a Pentium processor. Intel’s Pentium processors do not support overclocking, and you won’t find a motherboard that overrides Intel’s specifications. You can also overclock with the stock cooler, which is a great value-add. In our experience, all three Athlon models top out at the same clock speed, so if you’re going to overclock, you might as well save some money and get the Athlon 200GE. You can’t improve the clock speed of the built-in GPU, and memory is locked down to DDR4-2667, but with the right motherboard you can coax 3.9GHz out of an Athlon processor. AMD does not officially support overclocking the new Athlon processors, but that didn’t stop motherboard manufacturers from supporting the feature anyway.Īsus, Gigabyte, and MSI all offer motherboards that enable you to adjust the clock speed of Zen-based Athlon processors.
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However, the Athlon series is the outlier. And as such, AMD has embraced the feature across almost its entire product stack.
In recent years, overclocking has become much more mainstream. Of course, there are some significant historical exceptions- Intel’s Celeron 300A brings back memories-but overclocking is typically a feature reserved for higher-priced components. Typically, when you think about a budget processor and the features it would offer, overclocking doesn’t usually come to mind.
Especially when you’re on a budget, AMD’s Athlon processors support faster memory (a boon for integrated graphics), draw less power, and they include Vega GPU cores for moderate video tasks. And they draw less power than Intel’s counterparts (35w vs 54w). The Pentium CPUs also have built-in graphics processors, but Intel’s UHD Graphics 630 (G5600) and UHD Graphics 610 (G5400) are limited to 24 and 12 execution units, respectively.ĪMD’s Athlon processors also support faster memory than Intel’s latest Pentium chips (DDR4-2667 vs DDR4-2400). The 3.7 GHz Pentium G5400 and the 3.9 GHz Pentium G5600 have a distinct clock speed advantage over the 3.2 GHz, 3.4 GHz, and 3.5 GHz Athlon processors.ĪMD’s chips make up for their clock speed deficit with other features, such as the Radeon Vega-based graphics engine that's composed of three Compute Units (CUs), serving up a modest 192 Stream processors, 12 TMUs, and four ROPs. Pentium chips feature Intel’s Hyperthreading technology, and Athlon processors support Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT), giving both companies four logical threads to work with. Product Name: Pentium Gold Dual-core G6400 4.00 GHz Desktop Processorĭiscover new computers with amazing value powered by an Intel® Pentium® processor-from sleek laptops, 2 in 1s, and mini PCs, to stylish desktop PCs with great battery life, and performance for common applications so you can chat, shop, or surf in style.Intel Pentium Gold and AMD Athlon processors all come in dual-core configurations.