For many markets, two 3.8GHz cores with two threads each are perfectly sufficient. We are all accustomed to lower quality and features for a lower price and that sums up the G5420. While this is, perhaps, an ominous prelude to our benchmarks, there is another perspective and that is price. Practically, this means instructions such as bmi2 that we use in our chess benchmark are not available so that test reverts to using popcnt instead.
It is a SSE4.2 chip which was first implemented on Nahelem in 2008. While Intel has rolled out AVX, AVX2, AVX-512, and now DL Boost for AI inferencing, the G5420 supports none of these. These chips use a reduced instruction set.
Then again, with only two cores using 16GB x 4 DIMMs for 64GB yields 32GB per core or more than cloud service providers provision.ĭe-featuring goes beyond just memory speed and capacity. It still has two memory channels which help bandwidth on this two core/ four-thread processor. In terms of memory support, unlike many of its contemporaries that support DDR4-2666, the G5420 supports only up to 64GB using ECC UDIMMs at DDR4-2400 speeds. We find this CPU in some extremely low-end servers because it is low cost, low power (54W TDP), and has a feature many consumer CPUs lack: ECC memory support. For servers, the CPU has an integrated GPU, but unlike the workstation side, system vendors must explicitly do extra work to enable it in server platforms. There are only 20 other articles on STH where “cheap” is even used as of this writing. We do not often call a CPU “cheap” but in this case, that is what we have. While the “Pentium” brand was a premium line two decades ago, it now covers a fairly wide range of processors. Here is the lscpu output for the Pentium Gold G5420: Intel Pentium G5420 Lscpu Here is the Intel Ark page for your reference. Key stats for the Intel Pentium Gold G5420: 2 cores / 4 threads with a 3.8GHz base clock and no turbo boost. While many will review this chip as a potential desktop part, we are going to take a look at it in the context of a server chip. In our review, we are going to discuss the trade-offs made for this sub $65 part.
While this is a “Coffee Lake” generation CPU, it is heavily de-featured. In 2020, it is still considered a modern CPU but with many features missing. The Intel Pentium Gold G5420 is a great CPU possibly from a bygone era.