Intel Celeron Dual-Core G530 2.4 GHz Processor with Socket 1155, L3 2Mb, Sandy Bridge, 32nm

Title : Intel Celeron Dual-Core G530 2.4 GHz Processor with Socket 1155, L3 2Mb, Sandy Bridge, 32nm
ASIN : B005KIWT2O
Description : 2M Cache
Features :

• Product Type:Processor

List Price : £42.07
Price : £36.20
Saved Price : £5.87

category: Sandy Bridge
brand: Intel
Item Page Detail URL : link
Rating : 5.0
Review : Fantastic value, suprising performance
I picked one of these up whilst waiting for the new Ivy Bridge chips to come out, just as a stop gap. I was amazed to find that this chip is a very capable little number.

Performance for general day-to-day tasks is excellent, though this isn't that surprising given that word processing isn't particularly CPU intensive! What was more surprising was the performance for gaming and other more demanding tasks. Even without a discrete graphics card, the integrated graphics were able to run most recent games, albeit with settings from low to medium. Games like Starcraft II worked a charm.

Adding in a cheap graphics card (I went for an ATI 6670 for ~