Some thoughts on Kaby Lake Pentium

[CA_Steve]

ComputerBase took a look at the new Kaby Lake based Pentiums last week. Wow. It's a desktop i3 with the Pentium name tacked on. This must be Intel's low end early counter for AMD Zen...erm..Ryzen. Effectively an i3 for $65-85.

Nice CPU for a budget gaming build.

[Olle P]

The performance seems nothing short of astonishing at that price!

For a gaming computer there must be a disclaimer though:
Some new games, like Forza Horizon 3, will simply refuse to run unless you have an "approved" CPU (meaning newish Core i5 or better). So these new Pentiums will work fine as long as the games accept them at all.

[Abula]

Personally im disapointed on Kaby Lake, as i have been with the past 6 gens of intel, no real gains, just marginal. Seems next gen we might get an i7 six core.... hope we dont get another quad, hope also that AMD Rezen does good and puts some pressure to intel.

[quest_for_silence]

Personally im disapointed on Kaby Lake

About 25% over Sandy, with reference to IPC: 5% gain for each year after 2011, or if you rather 5% for each subsequent generation... yes, underwhelming (but the IGP is far better!).

[Olle P]

About 25% over Sandy, with reference to IPC...

True for Core i7 running multithreaded applications.

In single thread the difference in IPC is more like 0%. Any difference there shown in tests can be related to the difference in RAM performance.

[dasKrokodil]

For a gaming computer there must be a disclaimer though:
Some new games, like Forza Horizon 3, will simply refuse to run unless you have an "approved" CPU (meaning newish Core i5 or better). So these new Pentiums will work fine as long as the games accept them at all.

Is there a list of such games available?

[CA_Steve]

First, Forza 3 does actually play with a dual core Intel CPU. Here's a benchmarking thread with an i3 in it.

As for games that will fail to load unless you meet the min performance specs with a newish CPU and GPU, I haven't come across one. Sure, they might exclude an older CPU because it fails to have a current instruction set or processing capability or a GPU for the lack of DX-whatever, other than that it'll load the game - maybe at crappy stuttery slideshow like framerates, but it'll load.

That said, it's always worthwhile to look at the min specs and review benchmarks b4 getting a game.

[Olle P]

First, Forza 3 does actually play with a dual core Intel CPU. ...

Well, it refused to start with an Ivy Bridge Core i5.