Intel beefs up low-end line with Gemini Lake CPUs Intel has released the successors to its low-power Pentium 'Silver' and Celeron lines. The new chips are based on the Gemini Lake architecture (Intel's successor to 2016's Atom-derived Apollo Lake) and will be largely aimed at low-cost markets like budget PCs, 2-in-1 tablets, and data entry boxes that don't require much muscle …
True, and if you don't feel like giving Intel your money (like me) the Ryzen 7 1800X and Ryzen Threadripper are good for that too.
I don't think anyone would seriously consider a Pentium or Celeron for gaming regardless.
These things are more for thin clients, some PCs used in education, and POS systems that really don't need all the bells and whistles, they mainly just need to be able to handle running virtualized infrastructure software like virtzilla's vSphere or Citrix's XenClient, you're using but even then I wouldn't use Intel for it (and not because I hate them personally), Quaalcomm, Nvidia and AMD SoCs tend to work well for it and for far less money. Intel still has the stupid markup because of their name alone.
I can confirm. The current version - N3450 loaded with crapload of RAM and SSD - can barely handle the original Quake Arena at 1280x1024 (like it's playable but with perceptible and annoying stutter). Still for general day to day computing it's fine, it'll even run Ubuntu in HyperV (again with somewhat sluggish performance). The new chips with 4MB cache may do the trick.
I've not tried gaming, but the more recent dual-core Celerons are ok. Perfectly adequate for a point of sales machine, although the application that seems to require the most grunt is actually Outlook Web Access. Ever since Microsoft got rid of the low bandwidth version, they seem intent on creating a website that's as big a performance hog as the desktop app used to be, or maybe that's just what it's like in Firefox on linux.
"the Gemini Lake chips will sport integrated 802.11 B, G and N networking, letting them take advantage of gigabit Wi-Fi setups where available"
And, err, how does that help them take advantage of that then seeing as they would need AC support for anything approaching gigabit?!
In short, these aren't the chips you're going to drop into a high-end gaming rig; that's what the Kaby Lake Pentium Gold CPUs or top-end Core ranges are for.
Where have you been, lately ? Its Ryzen or Coffee Lake for gaming these days, sir! Kaby lake is "obsolete"! I know, 'coz it's almost crimble ... and I have a son into spending^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hgaming, of course, as he puts it, "not my money, yours, if I can get away with it! Muuuuuuuuuum, I really need this new CPU for Xmas, I got good grades, you see ...".
Coffee Lake needs a new z370 mb, it better have LDE's, and, of course, we want a modular PSU, because, cable management is a "thing", and, well, water cooler, of course ...
PS: There go the dreams of a self-paid prez I give to the daughter to give me for crimble ....
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