Pentium 3.1 2 LGA 1156 BX80646G3240

Registers as two cores in Win 8.1, but it has done a fantastic job of handling everything I've thrown at it.I play mostly Blizzard games, Origin games, Steam games. Also my kids love Minecraft, and Disney Infinity on it.Since we use it primarily to game, we only have one application open at a time. For a Gaming machine on a budget, this processor is fantastic.You could pay a lot more for an i3, i5, or i7, and honestly I don't think you'd actually ever be able to tell the difference unless you are trying to peg it. I currently have 2x i5 (4 cores) gaming machines and 1x i7 (8 cores). This plays games as well as either i5, and almost as well as the i7.For the price, this can't be beat.

Budget processor. Reasonably fast and is more than capable of handling day to day tasks for normal computer users. If you aren't a gamer or 3D designer or whatever, this is about right for you. Even for mid-range games, it can hold its own.

Great value for the money, but in hindsight I wished I'd gone with a cheap i3 over this. Slower than my 5yr old computer I built, but you get what you pay for.

People see Pentium now a days and think if it isn't an i3, 5 or 7 it must be junk.I've built dozens of PC's with these Intel Pentium-series CPU's based on Haswell/Devils Canyon and I gotta say I'm always impressed with how cool, efficient and snappy every system is. Don't underestimate these CPU's if you're on a budget. They sip power from the wall and are excellent dual-core work horses.

Amazed by the performance here for the price. I installed this in a small HTPC with the intent of using it just to stream TV shows and movies on a 1080P projector. The onboard IGP was adequate for 1080P streaming and playback and overall made for an excellent sub-$200 HTPCThrew in a GTX 950 and now I've got a quite capable budget gaming PC that seems to have no problems playing most newer games in 1080P smoothly. Just don't expect miracles though as some CPU intensive games will start to stutter liker BF4 multiplayer with higher player counts or MMORPG's but that is to be expected.

Haven't really run any intense tests on it and probably wont. It is being used in an Ubuntu server so it is probably even a little overkill. I don't expect to run into any issues in the near future with it not being powerful enough for simple file serving and media sharing.

Intel has a problem with their G line of CPU's. I was unable to upgrade from Windows 7 to 10 with this cpu. I put in a different CPU (i3 instead of G3240) in the motherboard to get Windows 10 to upgrade. Replaced CPU and all was fine until I ran updates, then the big update Version 11511,1056 would crash the pc before it could fully install. There were no BIOS updates for the motherboard I was using.After trying many things like disabling on-board graphics, disabling on-board sound, etc, I came across someone in a forum suggesting to disable Intel's "non execute bit" in the Bios settings.That fixed it, after that I was able to install the large update (and all updates after that).That would have fixed my initial problem of getting Window to install had I known at the time.I do not have this problem in any of their i series CPU's (1150 or 1151 sockets).Now once that was solved I am very happy with the performance vs price of this cpu but what a PITA it was to figure out what was wrong.To anyone that has a motherboard that doesn't allow you to make that change in BIOS you're going to have to buy a different board, or wait for mfg to put out a BIOS update.

Outstanding value processor that is extremely energy efficient and produces little heat or noise. For general office and web duties, this performs perfectly well. Very heavy multitaskers or gamers who play AAA-level titles such as COD/Battlefield/etc might want to look at quad-core models or at least i3-level processors, though light gaming is no problem here. Pair this up with an affordable SSD, and you have a very snappy system for a great price.