facebook rss twitter

Kaby Lake Pentium chips listed on Intel's ARK

by Mark Tyson on 11 January 2017, 10:01

Tags: Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaddab

Add to My Vault: x

Intel has quietly released information about its more affordable Kaby Lake desktop chips; the Pentium range. With its seventh generation designs Intel has mixed things around a bit. Previously modern Pentium chips didn't offer HT (Hyper Threading) but now they are all 2C/4T designs, with all the benefits that brings. However, another range-wide change won't be so welcome - the removal of support for ECC RAM.

You can read up on the five new HT enabled Pentium chips direct on Intel's ARK site:

The above Pentiums might now feature HT but, in general throughout the range, have the following disadvantages compared to a Core i3 counterpart; lower base clock speeds, 3MB rather than 4MB of cache, lack of AVX2 instruction set support, greater power consumption, lower spec HD graphics, and lack of ECC RAM support.

The lack of ECC RAM support in the new Pentiums could annoy some who have previously bought/created servers or NAS boxes using these cheaper processors. Of course the other differentiator between Pentium and Core i3 is the price. There is a $50 to $60 uplift in RRP for a corresponding i3 chip.

Intel Core i3-7350K Processor Review

On the topic of lower end Intel chips, we previously reported on an overclockable Kaby Lake Core i3 chip dubbed the Core i3-7350K. That interesting new i3 has recently been through the Legit Reviews labs. Priced at $168, the unlocked i3 processor on the test bench easily overclocked from its base freq of 4.2GHz to 5.1GHz by tweaking the multiplier and voltage. On lightly threaded tasks the i3-7350K could be a winner, reckoned the Legit guys in the review conclusion.



HEXUS Forums :: 6 Comments

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!
Gosh Intels naming conventions are a mess now. The Intel Pentium N3700 is a quad core chip for mobile use… They really should have stuck with Atom for low power, low spec mobile chips… Its become impossible to just buy a chip based on numbers without researching which core type they are using (and benchmarks) to actually know what you are getting nowadays. I miss the days where atom meant mobile, celeron, pentium, core where desktop with varying levels of performance.
Nice to see the main site has finally caught up with the forums on this one ;) http://forums.hexus.net/pc-hardware-components/368437-intel-pentium-g4560-new-budget-champion.html
cheesemp
Gosh Intels naming conventions are a mess now. The Intel Pentium N3700 is a quad core chip for mobile use… They really should have stuck with Atom for low power, low spec mobile chips… Its become impossible to just buy a chip based on numbers without researching which core type they are using (and benchmarks) to actually know what you are getting nowadays. I miss the days where atom meant mobile, celeron, pentium, core where desktop with varying levels of performance.

To be fair, model numbers from almost every tech manufacturer has been a complete mess for years and really are not indicative of their performance.

My main problem with Intel at the moment is how the features within a range keeps changing….like this with the HT/ECC, we now have Xeons and desktop CPUs on the same socket that requires different chipsets…..like Intel hadn't made motherboard/cpu pairings restrictive enough already……
shaithis
To be fair, model numbers from almost every tech manufacturer has been a complete mess for years and really are not indicative of their performance.

To be honest it's not a good excuse is it. It can't be that hard to have a model for cheap mobile, expensive mobile, cheap desktop, expensive desktop (and maybe mid level?), a generation and then a performance number? Its frustrating as choosing laptops etc for family/friends use to be simple job I could do do in a few minutes (i.e. find i3 laptop with 4gb/1tb etc) now it takes ages to work out what is equivalent to what…
Intel giveth and Intel and taketh away.