Conclusion

Armed with two highly-capable Intel Haswell cores ... this unassuming chip has plenty to offer and is available for as little as £40.

Intel's Pentium G3220 demonstrates what can be achieved by a low-cost, modern-day PC build. Armed with two highly-capable Intel Haswell cores, 3MB of onboard cache, integrated HD Graphics and flexible display outputs, this unassuming chip has plenty to offer and is available for as little as £40.

Put it together with, say, a low-cost 8-series motherboard, 4GB of RAM and a mid-range graphics card such as the GeForce GTX 750 Ti, and you have the basis of a capable 1080p gaming rig for roughly £200.

Granted, the Pentium won't offer the excitement of a Core-series chip, but this is our idea of good value for money, and as with the price-comparable AMD Athlon 5350, we have no hesitation in recommending the G3220 to users looking to build an affordable PC that's great for everyday use.

The Good

Great value for money
Good everyday performance
Dual-channel memory support
Cheap supporting motherboards
Works very well with a discrete GPU

The Bad

TDP higher than the price-comparable Athlon

HEXUS.awards

Intel Pentium G3220

HEXUS.where2buy

The Intel Pentium G3220 desktop CPU is available to purchase from Scan Computers.

HEXUS.right2reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

*UK-based HEXUS community members are eligible for free delivery and priority customer service through the SCAN.care@HEXUS forum.

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!

Good review - thanks. Nice to see a review looking at the affordable end of the market and looking at it in combination with discreet graphics.

One of these, a mini-itx mobo, memory, case and graphics card and you've got the making of an alright htpc!

not bad for the price and the thing is its probably as good as my q6600 go. remember those :)

Have one of these in my backup desktop. Along with a HD7770 and a 256GB samsung SSD its surprisingly nimble. It actually boots to desktop quicker than my Ivybridge i7 3770 though thats probably because its a newer machine and with less stuff on it.
Its only got 4GB memory (2 slots, 2 x 2GB) and i have been thinking of increasing it to 8Gb (2 x 4GB). I dont game or am i likely to do anything to intensive with it. The tests here seem to suggest that for general use there is no real benefit to doubling the ram or at least not £50 worth of benefit (approx cost of 2 x 4GB sticks)

Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH - Thu 17 Apr 2014 15:35