AMD Athlon X4 880K Versus Intel Pentium G4400 Review

Introduction

AMD's Athlon X4 880K is all about value and while it is nice to have the latest and most powerful hardware, most of us can only afford something in the mid to low-end. The Athlon X4 880K is essentially a A10-7870K/7890K without an integrated R7 GPU, allowing the X4 880K to be about $50 cheaper than the A10-7890K. When you are on a budget, every cent counts toward a graphics card so if you are looking to play modern games, it is a smarter choice to get an Athlon X4 880K CPU with a dedicated GPU than the A10-7890K APU.

The Athlon X4 880K retails for $95 and it is a quite capable and affordable chip for gaming at 1080p. It comes unlocked so it is easily overclockable and the new improved stock cooler is quiet. The X4-880K has four cores so it's equipped to run the newest game titles. Many of the newest game titles require more than two cores so having a quad-core is a must nowadays if you want to play the latest titles. AMD is shipping the X4 880K with the "near-silent 125W thermal solution" that's actually quite good compared to the previous stock cooler that were too loud.

The stock cooler that ships with the X4 880K is the same as the Wraith Cooler that ships with the flagship A10-7890K and FX-8370/50. The only difference is that the X4 880K's cooler lacks the plastic shroud and LED-lit AMD logo of the Wraith. Other than that, they are basically the same cooler so with that being said, you can read my review of the Wraith Cooler here. The stock cooler is compact enough that it shouldn't interfere with other components unless you have an extremely cramped case.

Comparison

CPUs Tested In This Review
Model:	AMD Athlon X4-880K	Intel Pentium G4400
Price:	$95	$60
Core Name:	Godavari	Skylake
Manufacturing Tech:	28nm	14nm
Cores / Threads:	4/4	2/2
Base Freq:	4.0 Ghz	3.3 GHz
Boost Clock:	4.2 Ghz	N/A
L2 Cache:	4 MB	2 x 256 KB
L3 Cache:	N/A	3MB
TDP:	95W	65W
Socket:	FM2+	LGA 1151
Unlocked:	Yes	No
iGPU:	No	Yes

The X4-880K processor has four cores based on the 28nm process and is clocked at 4.0 GHz with a boost clock of 4.2 GHz. The chip comes with 4MB of L2 cache and no L3 cache and it is compatible with the FM2+ platform. The Intel Pentium G4400 is a non-hyperthreaded dual-core that is based on the 14nm Skylake CPU architecture. It is clocked at 3.3 GHz and doesn’t feature any Turbo Boost clock. It comes with just 3 MB of L3 cache and a TDP of 65W.

Test Setup & Power Consumption

Test Setup
Processor:	AMD Athlon X4 880K Intel Pentium G4400
Motherboard:	ASRock A88M-G/3.1 MSI H110M Pro-VD
RAM:	Kingston HyperX 8GB DDR3 2133 MHz G.SKILL Ripjaws 8GB DDR4 2133 MHz
Graphics Card:	Sapphire R9 390X
Storage:	Samsung 840 Pro 256GB
Power Supply:	Antec HCP 850W
Case:	Corsair 750D
OS:	Windows 8.1 64Bit
Thermal Compound:	Noctua NT-H1
Heatsinks:	AMD Stock Cooler Intel Stock Cooler

I have prepared a number of different synthetic benchmarks and game benchmarks for the X4-880K processor. Testing will be conducted by comparing the X4-880K against the Pentium G4400 at stock settings. All the games have been tested in single-player at 720P highest settings. I'm comparing AMD's X4-880K against Intel's G4400 because both are aimed at budget users who want to spend as little money as possible while still getting the best performance. Both these processors are very popular among budget gamers and in this review we will see which processor offers the best performance. I will be using the Sapphire R9 390X for benchmarking the processors in games.

Idle power consumption of the entire computer will be measured after leaving the computer idle for 20 minutes. Load power consumption of the entire computer will be measured after playing Witcher 3 on high settings at 1080P for 20 minutes. I want to make it clear that the power consumption measurements will differ per computer and components from my measurements if you add optical drives, HDDs etc.

All of the testing is done with an ambient temperature of ~19C. CPU-Z will be used to verify the CPU speed and the voltage being used in Windows 8.1. Also, the CPUs are tested with the default settings (Turbo, C1E etc) enabled in the BIOS.

Both CPUs consume about the same amount of power in idle but under load, the Pentium G4400 consumes way less and this shouldn't come as a surprise since the G4400 is built on a 14nm fabrication node. The R9 390X in idle consumes around 20W to 25W and anywhere from 150W to 250W in gaming so you can use that to get an idea of how much power the CPUs consume without the GPU.

CPU Performance Results

Cinebench R15 is the perfect benchmarking tool for comparing CPU performance across various systems and platforms. Looking at the chart above, we can see that the X4-880K performs about the same as the X4-845 and A10-7890K in both single and multi core performance. When compared against the G4400, it wins in multi-core performance but loses in single-core performance.


The X4-880K was able to finish this test in 12 minutes due to having more cores than the G4400.


Once again we see the X4-880K win in multi-core performance but lose in single-core performance against the G4400.


The X4-880K wins this test with 4894 points and the G4400 with 3779 points.

AMD Athlon X4-880K In Gaming

All three CPUs delivered playable fps in Assassins Creed Syndicate but the Pentium G4400 achieved higher FPS.


In Metro Last Light, the Athlon CPUs achieved higher minimum and maximum fps.


In Battlefield 4, all three CPUs performed similarly the same.


The X4-880K and G4400 performed about the same in Batman Arkham Knight while the X4-845 fell a little bit behind.


In Witcher 3, the X4-880K and X4-845 did much better than the G4400. The game ran much smoother on the Athlon CPUs than the G4400.


Far Cry 4 doesn't work on dual cores so you will need a quad-core/four threads processor for this game. The X4-880K and X4-845 performed very well and had no trouble maintaining above 40 FPS.


GTA V is another game that doesn't officially support dual-core processors but the game will boot just fine if you have a dual-core processor whereas in Far Cry 4, the screen hangs if you have a dual-core processor. With that being said, the X4-880K and X4-845 crushed the Pentium G4400 in GTA V.

Value & Conclusion

The X4 880K is an impressive processor that is hard to beat for its price and having an unlocked multiplier makes the X4-880K an even better product than the Pentium G4400. In the majority of the tests, the Athlon X4 880K performed much better than the Pentium G4400. It offers good multi-core performance and since it has four cores, you don't have to worry about needing more cores later.

On the Intel side of things, the upgrade path is much better with the Pentium G4400 but it is also more expensive. If you think you will be upgrading your processor for more performance in like a year or two then the G4400 is the way to go. Intel's Pentium processors are dual-core without Hyper-Threading and an increasing number of modern games nowadays demand four cores thus making them poor choices for future gaming rigs. The Pentium G4400 is great in single-threaded applications such as office work, YouTube and browsing the web but for games that use more than 2 cores, the X4 880K would be a better overall choice.

Titles such as Far Cry 4 don't work on dual-core processors. Dragon Age Inquisition is also anther game that doesn't work on dual core processors and if you are going to be playing GTA V then the Pentium G4400 will struggle. The minimum requirement is a quad-core for GTA V and when I was testing it with the G4400, the frame rate was dipping in the low 40s. So in that sense, the X4 880K is the better choice for being a quad-core.

Pros:
+ Unlocked
+ Quad-Core
+ Cheap Platform Price
+ Good Multi-Core Performance
+ Silent Stock Cooler

Cons:
- Slower Single-Core Performance
- No Upgradeable Path

Overall, I recommend the Athlon X4-880K to anybody who is on a budget that wants to build a nice gaming rig without breaking the bank.

Final Score    9.0