Overclockable Pentium Anniversary Edition Review: The Intel Pentium G3258
by Ian Cutress on July 14, 2014 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Pentium
- Overclocking
- Pentium-AE
- G3258
Discrete GPU Gaming
When comparing CPUs to APUs, one strength shown by team Blue in the past is the discrete GPU performance. When using dual graphics cards at a 1920x1080p resolution, at a lower amount of CPU power overall, there tends to be a significant amount of variance when extra CPU performance is applied. While it seems the overclock numbers are nice for a Pentium, a little extra money for an i3 at stock seems to be the choice here.
F1 2013
Bioshock Infinite
Tomb Raider
Sleeping Dogs
Company of Heroes 2
Battlefield 4
All of our titles, except Tomb Raider, get a significant increase from overclocking the CPU. However, it is worth noting (especially in titles such as Battlefield) that using and i3 from the start gets an even better result. This is because the gaming industry has moved on from the last overclockable dual core Intel CPU - games can now take advantage of more cores, and that jump from 2 cores to hyperthreading lets a high end title stretch its legs a little more than a simple overclock.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
96 Comments
View All Comments
extide - Tuesday, July 15, 2014 - link
EDIT: I am talking about stock speeds, of course.plonk420 - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
could you guys do some more games (and try the Celeron G1820 or G1840--the cheapest Haswell Intels on The Egg)? don't have a lot of cash at the moment and am curious about the cheapest of cheap livingroom gaming boxes i could build...Marburg U - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
Ian, there is no such thing as "free performance" when the cpu is designed and sold as an overclockable cpu.MikeMurphy - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
It's free given there is no price premium with this particular chip.ervinshiznit - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
Ian, you are mistaken. The core i5 and i7 K editions have AVX and AES support. Look it up on Intel's ARK processor feature filter. They do not have TSX support, in contrast to their non K counterparts.Ian Cutress - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
That's what I meant :) Having the new DC CPUs support VT-d and TSX and writing about those in the last week had my mind at a slant.kaelynthedove78 - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
Warning: rant ahead.It is 2014Q3 and still, no reason to upgrade from Sandy Bidge 2600K @ 4.8Ghz, $30 air tower cooler setup to anything Intel has to offer. Load temperature is <80C after 24 hours of non-stop Linpack.
I feel so sad, Ivy Bridge was a downgrade for me, Haswell was an even hotter downgrade and now Devil's Canyon can't reach 4.8GHz even with water cooling. $500 for same performance but hotter than ever? How do these products get raving reviews?!
I need single-thread performance so more slow cores won't help me. Three and half years waiting and still nothing. AMD, VIA, anybody, please come and kick Intel in the behind so I could finally get >10% performance increase after four generations!
DanNeely - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
Unless we find a successor material for Silicon, at this point I don't think it's going to happen. We appear to've hit an effective clock speed wall; and making the cores/caches themselves bigger is deep into diminishing returns.Casecutter - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
Thanks for this. I came away with the same deduction after reading other various articles, but those weren't as clear-cut or upfront with the findings. While nice price to start for a CPU, I think after investing in an acceptable OC'n mobo and good cooler, why? An i3 with any regular mobo and stock cooler offers better gaming, and if that's what it about Pentium AE isn't the best route. For the average entry level builds, it best to not give a kid or novice the impression that hitting 4.7Ghz isn’t for the faint of heart.I would’ve like to have seen and FX-6300 as that has been my go-to chip for budget Gaming builds, at $100 along with ASRock 970 Extreme3 R2.0 bundled for around $160 from MicroCenter you can’t bet against it. With most any $20-30 aftermarket cooler, I’ll get a 4.5-4.7Ghz and call it good. For Gaming most every title plays better verses the i3 (say perhaps Arkham City or Shogun 2), while heading into i5 territory.
Ian Cutress - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
I'm retesting some AM3 CPUs right now and have an FX-6350 being tested at this very moment. Check anandtech.com/bench in the next few days and I'll upload my results.