Intel Pentium G4620 Review

Presenting the Pentium G4620! This Desktop processor is a powerhouse in Intel's entry-level series. Launched in 2017, it packs 2 cores and 4 threads. It runs at a base clock speed of 3.7GHz, can accelerate to 3.7GHz, and has a power requirement of 51W, making it an ideal choice for your gaming system. The Pentium G4620 is a product of the advanced Kaby Lake-S 14nm technology and is a part of the distinguished Pentium series.

And guess what? The Pentium G4620 is the ultimate successor to Intel's previous-gen gaming champion, the Pentium G4520. The Pentium G4520 was based on the legendary Skylake-S and 14nm process, and it made its grand entrance into the gaming scene back in 2015. But now, it's time for the Pentium G4620 to take the throne and conquer the gaming world!

This CPU packs 2 cores and 4 threads, the first time this many come in a mainstream package! Plus, it costs about the same as the A6-7470K, which only has 2 cores and 2 threads. Talk about a total noob!

Can the Intel Pentium G4620 finally dethrone the king of mainstream CPUs, the A6-7470K? It's a maybe. The Pentium G4620 doesn't quite reach the same single-core performance as its rival, but more games are starting to use all those threads, so who cares!

Heads up, with a simple overclock, the Pentium G4600 can actually perform almost as well as the Pentium G4620, even when the Pentium G4620 is overclocked too. But the Pentium G4600 is $70 cheaper! Don't get us wrong, the Pentium G4620 is still a beast and offers more overall performance than AMD's A6-7470K, but if you're on a budget, the cheaper sibling might be the better call.

The Pentium G4620 is the more expensive version of the Pentium G4600, and it shows with its higher base and boost clock speeds: 3.7 GHz and 3.7 GHz, respectively. That's a nice boost in speed, but the real game changer is the higher power delivery (PPT). This lets the motherboard pump more juice (up to 142W) to the Pentium G4620 compared to the Pentium G4600's limit of 51W. This extra power allows the Pentium G4620 to crank up the boost clocks even more aggressively, on both single and multiple cores. That means the performance gap between these two CPUs might be bigger than what the specs on paper suggest.

But for most gamers who also do other stuff on their PC besides gaming, the Pentium G4620 is a better overall choice. It offers double the threads compared to the similarly priced A6-7470K, and those extra threads come in handy for tasks like editing and encoding videos. The Pentium chips have always been great for these workloads, and Intel's recent improvements to AVX performance are super impressive.

Straight out of the box, the Pentium G4620 is a better all-rounder than the A6-7470K. It offers slightly better performance than its cheaper sibling, the Pentium G4600, and comes with a free cooler which saves you money on the build. Plus, there are tons of motherboards compatible with it, so you have plenty of options to choose from.

The Intel Pentium G4620 launched on Jan 2017 for $100, which is pretty much the same price as the last-generation Pentium G4520. At least there's no crazy price hike this generation!

For gamers, both the A6-7470K and Pentium G4620 are great choices. They're neck and neck, with a slight edge to the AMD CPU if you don't overclock it. The Pentium G4620's base performance can be achieved with cheaper RAM (around $90), whereas the A6-7470K needs faster RAM ($110-$120) to hit the frame rates we showed. The price difference is small though, and with anything less than an RTX 2070 or Vega 64 graphics card, your GPU will bottleneck your performance anyway. BottleneckAtPlay

One of the best things about the Intel Pentium G4620 is that it comes with a free CPU cooler! You can grab the Pentium G4620 for $100 without having to spend extra on cooling.

The Intel Pentium G4620 comes with a basic heatsink cooler, nothing fancy. But it gets the job done for this low-power CPU (TDP of 51W). You won't need a fancy aftermarket cooler unless you want to overclock it.

The Intel Pentium G4620 is a decent performing chip for $100. The main competitor at this price point is the A6-7470K, a 2-core unlocked processor with integrated graphics, which costs $215.7.

The Intel Pentium G4620 might not get a lot of hype, but it's a solid entry-level option that delivers a good experience for casual users.

If you don't care too much about overclocking and max boost speeds, then the Intel Pentium G4600 is a good option for $87. It also has 2 cores and 4 threads, but with slightly lower clock speeds (3.6GHz base and 3.6GHz boost).

Building on the success of mainstream Pentium CPUs, Intel is now attacking the entry-level market with the Pentium G4620 processors, available since Jan 2017.