The Pentium Processor: A Surprisingly Decent Choice for Gaming

Despite its age, the pentium processor still has its uses in modern gaming. However, it's essential to understand that the gameplay will not always be consistent. In fact, the results show that even with a decent graphics card, the pentium can struggle with certain titles.

A Test of Consistency: Forza Horizon 5 and Metro Exodus

The first test was forza horizon 5, which followed in the footsteps of metro exodus in terms of average frame rate performance. The pentium paired with the 30-60 Ti combo showed better results than expected, but ultimately fell short due to stuttering and frame dips. The one percent figure reflected these issues, indicating a less-than-stellar gaming experience. On occasion, the game even froze, prompting a warning related to streaming issues. This was a frustrating experience, as cars often froze before the warning or the game became unplayable altogether.

A More Consistent Experience: Red Dead Redemption 2

The i3 and 3050 combo performed better in terms of average frame rate, but still experienced occasional drops. However, this was significantly less noticeable than with the pentium, which struggled to maintain a consistent frame rate. The game didn't noticeably drop from 75 to 35 FPS, causing sudden stuttering or freezing. This made for a more enjoyable gaming experience.

A Softer Performance: Red Dead Redemption 2 Continued

Red Dead Redemption 2 was another title that benefited from the i3 and 3050 combo. The expected order of things was restored, with the extra cores helping in town-based gameplay where NPCs added stress to the processor. However, if benchmarked in a less populated area, the results may have been closer. Red Dead is generally an easy game to play in terms of CPU requirements, even when running on older hardware.

A Struggle for Performance: Fortnite

Fortnite was another title that struggled with the pentium's two-core chips. The performance mode enabled helped somewhat, but the average FPS was still lower than expected, and the one percent figure indicated significant performance issues. The game sometimes stuttered or froze, feeling like a bad internet connection. This occurred more frequently with weaker processors, which can repeat frames and cause the player to return to previous positions.

A Surprisingly Good Combination: Far Cry 6

Far Cry 6 was a close call for the pentium G 7400 and 3060 Ti combo, but ultimately fell short due to its reliance on pure GPU power. Despite this, it wasn't an unplayable experience, and the game remained relatively smooth throughout. This was largely due to Far Cry 6's forgiving nature when it comes to processor requirements.

A Note on Choosing Components

The results of these tests highlight that it's not always a good idea to pair a budget graphics card with a low-end processor. Instead, consider combining a more affordable GPU with a mid-range or high-end CPU for better performance. For example, pairing an i3-1000F with a 3060 Ti showed significantly improved results.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone and welcome to another video now intel's socket 1700 platform is home to some great cpus the pentium g7400 is ideal for an everyday pc build and it can even play games provided those games aren't too processor intensive working our way up through the ranks and we've got the i312 100f which offers excellent performance for the price and is currently one of the best quad core chips available if you have an even bigger budget then something like an i5 12 400 f or i7 12 700 might be just what you're looking for as you know i'm always more interested in the entry level side of things and having spent some time with the aforementioned pentium and i3 i wanted to experiment a bit more with these two lower cost offerings i've said before that the pentium is good for a pentium but it's hard to justify if it's priced quite closely to the i3 12 100 f where you live that said i couldn't help but wonder how things would differ if our setup was a little more mismatched today we're going to be pairing the pentium g7400 with an rtx 3060 ti and combining the i3 12 100 100f with an rtx 3050 to see how they stack up against each other when the better gpu is paired with the cpu that's weaker and the weaker gpu is paired with the better cpu got confused for a minute there this is of course the opposite of what i'd recommend but i thought it would be fun to see if a higher end graphics card would allow the lower end cpu to outperform its more capable competitor or whether the cpu bottleneck caused by the two-core pentium is simply too severe i'm going to start off with the results that you might find most surprising this is metro exodus enhanced i think that because of the ray tracing a more powerful gpu is more important here so the g7 430 60 ti combo wipes the floor with the i3 12 100 and 30 50 despite the additional processing power of the i3 you'll see as this video goes on that the results tend to swing the other way in most but not all cases though metro here shows the biggest difference by far it doesn't seem to care about the pentiums two physical cores i can't say whether or not in other scenarios where ray tracing is present that this would still be the case i'm sure it wouldn't be at least not all of the time but the more gpu power here the better with that being said the point one percent figure is still worse than with the i3 setup because there were one or two moments when i noticed a little bit of stutter it wasn't prolonged by any means there were just two moments where the game sort of frozen and froze in a matter of milliseconds but it was noticeable and served as a precursor to the following gameplay test cyberpunk is far more dependent on cpu power so the i3 and 3050 combo did far better in terms of an average and the percentile lows in empty areas like here for example the g7400 held up just fine and because of the 36 dti's extra power this system as a whole exhibited better results very briefly but when we made our way towards night city and the people and cars started filling up the screen it was game over for the two core four thread pentium g7400 turning crowd density down will probably help a bit with this cpu but the placental lows will still be far from consistent meaning that the gameplay will be far from consistent don't get me wrong the pentium is still a decent choice just not for anyone wanting to play the most current aaa games with a solid frame rate it was to be expected really but as the first result shows that isn't always the case forza horizon 5 followed in the footsteps of metro exodus a little bit the average frame rate was better with the pentium and the 30 60 ti combo but ultimately we were let down once again by the one and one percent figures which reflect the stutter and frame dips that were present here on one occasion the game even froze and i got a warning related to streaming issues i can't remember it exactly but i believe it's to do with the game not being able to stream in the assets fast enough due to the lack of cpu power so you'll find that cars often just freeze before you get the warning or the game totally jams all together and doesn't continue i've seen a couple of things happen with older cpus like that this did only happen once here though the i3 and 3050 combo did perform worse in terms of an average but i'd take this lower average any day because it came with a more consistent one and point one percent low things were certainly smoother overall here the game didn't noticeably drop from 75 to 35 fps and cause me to drive into a wall or a tree or competing racer without wanting to it's not completely unplayable on the pentium but it is quite unpleasant and unpredictable which is worse with red dead redemption 2 the expected order of things was once again restored the i3 and 3050 combo did better here because the extra cores help in towns like valentine where the extra npcs stress the processor a little bit more if i had benchmarked this game in the middle of nowhere the results may have been closer they definitely would have been actually red dead is another title that is fairly easy going with regards to its cpu requirements i mean we ran it on an i3 with just one core and hyper threading enabled not too long ago it's happy with four solid cores or two strong ones like the golden cove ones found inside the dual core g7400 even the 1.1 lows held up fairly well and while frame drops are noticeable and you can definitely feel them there wasn't any sudden stutter or freezing to speak of so that's always a bonus fortnite fell apart with the pentium two core chips never fare well in my experience not without performance mode enabled anyway and with the pentium g7400 i noticed a few off-putting issues the average fps was still great and the one percent low wasn't even that bad but the difference between this figure and the 0.1 low indicates performance issues there was also a noticeable effect not too dissimilar from when you have a bad internet connection the game sort of repeats frames and sometimes you're back in the position you were a few steps ago i have experienced this before with two core processors and i always double check my internet connection when it happens but it's too much of a coincidence it only ever tends to happen with two core processors like the g7400 here or just weaker and older cpus the i3 and 3050 combo was victorious here and definitely the ideal way to play finally then it's far cry 6 and this was a close one with the pentium g 7400 and 3060 combo sorry 30 60 ti combo doing slightly better in terms of an average but once again faltering from a percentile perspective even so it wasn't an unplayable mess or anything like that i think because far cry 6 is also quite forgiving when it comes to processors it prefers pure gpu power though with two cores you still won't escape the inevitable fps drops and stutter that comes with the hardware limitations today's results didn't follow the path that i was expecting and things were definitely a little more mixed and all over the place overall it's never a good idea to pair a g7400 with a 3060 ti but it isn't a bad idea to pair an i312 100f with a 30 50. so i think what we can take away from this is don't blow your budget on a graphics card and hope to pair it with a really entry level processor because things won't turn out the way you want them to especially in those more cpu intensive games like cyberpunk i'm sure none of you were ever going to do that but it's nice to see how things can differ performance wise when we mix up the combinations a little bit if you enjoyed this one then leave a like down below leave a dislike if you didn't subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully i'll see all of you in the next onehello everyone and welcome to another video now intel's socket 1700 platform is home to some great cpus the pentium g7400 is ideal for an everyday pc build and it can even play games provided those games aren't too processor intensive working our way up through the ranks and we've got the i312 100f which offers excellent performance for the price and is currently one of the best quad core chips available if you have an even bigger budget then something like an i5 12 400 f or i7 12 700 might be just what you're looking for as you know i'm always more interested in the entry level side of things and having spent some time with the aforementioned pentium and i3 i wanted to experiment a bit more with these two lower cost offerings i've said before that the pentium is good for a pentium but it's hard to justify if it's priced quite closely to the i3 12 100 f where you live that said i couldn't help but wonder how things would differ if our setup was a little more mismatched today we're going to be pairing the pentium g7400 with an rtx 3060 ti and combining the i3 12 100 100f with an rtx 3050 to see how they stack up against each other when the better gpu is paired with the cpu that's weaker and the weaker gpu is paired with the better cpu got confused for a minute there this is of course the opposite of what i'd recommend but i thought it would be fun to see if a higher end graphics card would allow the lower end cpu to outperform its more capable competitor or whether the cpu bottleneck caused by the two-core pentium is simply too severe i'm going to start off with the results that you might find most surprising this is metro exodus enhanced i think that because of the ray tracing a more powerful gpu is more important here so the g7 430 60 ti combo wipes the floor with the i3 12 100 and 30 50 despite the additional processing power of the i3 you'll see as this video goes on that the results tend to swing the other way in most but not all cases though metro here shows the biggest difference by far it doesn't seem to care about the pentiums two physical cores i can't say whether or not in other scenarios where ray tracing is present that this would still be the case i'm sure it wouldn't be at least not all of the time but the more gpu power here the better with that being said the point one percent figure is still worse than with the i3 setup because there were one or two moments when i noticed a little bit of stutter it wasn't prolonged by any means there were just two moments where the game sort of frozen and froze in a matter of milliseconds but it was noticeable and served as a precursor to the following gameplay test cyberpunk is far more dependent on cpu power so the i3 and 3050 combo did far better in terms of an average and the percentile lows in empty areas like here for example the g7400 held up just fine and because of the 36 dti's extra power this system as a whole exhibited better results very briefly but when we made our way towards night city and the people and cars started filling up the screen it was game over for the two core four thread pentium g7400 turning crowd density down will probably help a bit with this cpu but the placental lows will still be far from consistent meaning that the gameplay will be far from consistent don't get me wrong the pentium is still a decent choice just not for anyone wanting to play the most current aaa games with a solid frame rate it was to be expected really but as the first result shows that isn't always the case forza horizon 5 followed in the footsteps of metro exodus a little bit the average frame rate was better with the pentium and the 30 60 ti combo but ultimately we were let down once again by the one and one percent figures which reflect the stutter and frame dips that were present here on one occasion the game even froze and i got a warning related to streaming issues i can't remember it exactly but i believe it's to do with the game not being able to stream in the assets fast enough due to the lack of cpu power so you'll find that cars often just freeze before you get the warning or the game totally jams all together and doesn't continue i've seen a couple of things happen with older cpus like that this did only happen once here though the i3 and 3050 combo did perform worse in terms of an average but i'd take this lower average any day because it came with a more consistent one and point one percent low things were certainly smoother overall here the game didn't noticeably drop from 75 to 35 fps and cause me to drive into a wall or a tree or competing racer without wanting to it's not completely unplayable on the pentium but it is quite unpleasant and unpredictable which is worse with red dead redemption 2 the expected order of things was once again restored the i3 and 3050 combo did better here because the extra cores help in towns like valentine where the extra npcs stress the processor a little bit more if i had benchmarked this game in the middle of nowhere the results may have been closer they definitely would have been actually red dead is another title that is fairly easy going with regards to its cpu requirements i mean we ran it on an i3 with just one core and hyper threading enabled not too long ago it's happy with four solid cores or two strong ones like the golden cove ones found inside the dual core g7400 even the 1.1 lows held up fairly well and while frame drops are noticeable and you can definitely feel them there wasn't any sudden stutter or freezing to speak of so that's always a bonus fortnite fell apart with the pentium two core chips never fare well in my experience not without performance mode enabled anyway and with the pentium g7400 i noticed a few off-putting issues the average fps was still great and the one percent low wasn't even that bad but the difference between this figure and the 0.1 low indicates performance issues there was also a noticeable effect not too dissimilar from when you have a bad internet connection the game sort of repeats frames and sometimes you're back in the position you were a few steps ago i have experienced this before with two core processors and i always double check my internet connection when it happens but it's too much of a coincidence it only ever tends to happen with two core processors like the g7400 here or just weaker and older cpus the i3 and 3050 combo was victorious here and definitely the ideal way to play finally then it's far cry 6 and this was a close one with the pentium g 7400 and 3060 combo sorry 30 60 ti combo doing slightly better in terms of an average but once again faltering from a percentile perspective even so it wasn't an unplayable mess or anything like that i think because far cry 6 is also quite forgiving when it comes to processors it prefers pure gpu power though with two cores you still won't escape the inevitable fps drops and stutter that comes with the hardware limitations today's results didn't follow the path that i was expecting and things were definitely a little more mixed and all over the place overall it's never a good idea to pair a g7400 with a 3060 ti but it isn't a bad idea to pair an i312 100f with a 30 50. so i think what we can take away from this is don't blow your budget on a graphics card and hope to pair it with a really entry level processor because things won't turn out the way you want them to especially in those more cpu intensive games like cyberpunk i'm sure none of you were ever going to do that but it's nice to see how things can differ performance wise when we mix up the combinations a little bit if you enjoyed this one then leave a like down below leave a dislike if you didn't subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully i'll see all of you in the next one\n"