Intel Pentium G3430 Review

The Pentium G3430 is one of Intel's entry-level Desktop processors. It was released in 2013 with 2 cores and 2 threads. With base clock at 3.3GHz, max speed at 3.3GHz, and a 54W power rating. The Pentium G3430 is based on the Haswell 22nm family and is part of the Pentium series.

As the higher-priced version of the Pentium G3420, the Pentium G3430 has higher base and Boost frequencies of 3.3 and 3.3 GHz, respectively. That's an increase in base frequency and a bump to boost clocks, but the real advantage should lay in the higher Package Power Tracking (PPT) envelope, which is a measurement of the maximum amount of power delivered to the socket. The Pentium G3420's PPT tops out at 54W, while the motherboard can pump up to 142W to the Pentium G3430 at peak performance. That opens up much more aggressive boost behavior, on both single and multiple cores, that could widen the performance gap beyond what we see on the spec sheet.

The Intel Pentium G3430 has a 54W TDP, and with that fairly low amount of power, it's able to deliver quite a lot. This processor can keep up with even the AMD A8-6600K, a processor that considerably costs more and consumes more power, with its TDP of 100W.

So which should you buy? Let's get that out of the way. Before this comparison review we updated our Best CPU feature and we said you should go with the A8-6500 as it comes with a better stock cooler, can be overclocked, and the FM2 platform offers a significantly better upgrade path.

When it comes to gaming it’s fair to say there’s no wrong option here and the A8-6500 and Pentium G3430 are evenly matched. The Pentium G3430 is at times faster thanks to better game support and lower latencies, but the A8-6500 is often able to ensure smoother frame rates thanks to its support for twice as many threads.

If you're mostly playing games on your PC, you will be happy buying either processor. Both proved to be solid options and are evenly matched with a slight advantage to the AMD chip if you don't tune up the A8 processor. The base performance we showed for the Pentium G3430 can be achieved with $90 memory, while the A8-6500 will require $110 - $120 memory in order to enable the frame rates shown here. It’s not a big cost difference and right now with anything less than an RTX 2070 or Vega 64 you’ll more than likely become GPU limited.

Moving beyond games, it’s an easy win for the A8-6500. The A8 upgrade path on A55, A75, A85X motherboards, all support upcoming Piledriver processors. So if you buy a nice A55, A75, A85X board now with the A8-6500, you’ll be able to slap a Haswell processor on there later in the year, or whenever you deem it necessary.

One of the nice things about the Intel Pentium G3430 processors is that the retail boxed models come with a CPU cooler. So, you can pick something like the Intel Pentium G3430 up for $116 and don’t need to spend any extra money on CPU cooling.

The Intel Pentium G3430 retail boxed processor comes with the traditional ‘pancake’ CPU cooler. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done on this processor which is rated at 54W TDP. You do not need to have an aftermarket cooling solution unless you want to.

The Intel Pentium G3430 seems to be a decent performing chip that is readily available for $116 at your favorite retailer. The main competition for this processor is the A8-6500 4-Core unlocked desktop processor with Radeon HD 8570D graphics ($257.09 shipped).

That said, Intel still lags behind in frequency when the A8-6600K operates at 3.9GHz at any given moment and 4.2GHz when push comes to shove.

If extended overclocking and boost frequencies are trivial matters to you, Intel also offers the Pentium G3420 at $252. It’s still outfitted with 2-cores and 2-threads, but clocks in at a slower 3.2GHz and maxes out at only 3.2GHz.

That said, to squeeze out all the potential of this surprisingly potent entry-level chip, you’ll want (and need) to splurge on an enthusiast-grade Q87, Z87, Z97 motherboard.

Fresh from a successful roll-out of mainstream Pentium CPUs, Intel's attack on AMD now extends down into the entry-level with its Pentium G3430 processors, which the company is making available as of Oct 2013.

Although there is an unlocked A8-6600K at the top of AMD's A8 family, it isn't particularly popular. The chip is relatively expensive, and it unfortunately requires a pricey motherboard for overclocking support. In comparison, Intel lets you overclock Pentium on cheaper platforms.