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
smunter6 - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
And don't forget about Micro Center which has been offering the G3258 for $60 since it came out.HanzNFranzen - Tuesday, July 15, 2014 - link
The i3 4130 is on Newegg at the moment for $112.00 (3.4ghz instead of 3.5ghz of the 4330)Computer Bottleneck - Tuesday, July 15, 2014 - link
The i3-4130 is not just 100 Mhz slower than i3-4330. It is also missing 1MB of cache. (See my comments elsewhere after this article on why that might be important. I posted an Anandtech forum link with some test results to back up my concerns)HangFire - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
The E2160 was Core 2 architecture, but it wasn't a "Core 2 Duo E2160". It was Pentium-branded with no Level 3 cache and a very small Level 2 cache.I had the E2180 and overclocked the snot out of it for over a year until I ponied up the bucks for a quad core. It could play any game of the time on "High" competently except for some micro-stutters. I attribute that to the lack of a big CPU L2/L3 cache, not to mention the old-style FSB memory interface.
Rankor - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
"...taking a low cost part, such as the Celeron 300A, and adjusting one or two settings to make it run as fast as a Pentium III 450 MHz."Celery 300A's were based off the Mendocino Pentium II, not the Pentium III Coppermines.
drexnx - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
the 450mhz p!!! the 300A competed against weren't coppermines though, they were Katmai cores ;)drexnx - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
and that half-speed off-die L2 cache was a big detriment to the Katmai as well, since the 300A was full speed on-dieHruodgar - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
Also I could get mine to 504 MHZ :)extide - Tuesday, July 15, 2014 - link
Original 300A had only 128K though, where as the Coppermines had 256K. Some of the later Celerons had no L2, though.Concillian - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
stock speed i3 beats a massively OC'ed dual core. The multi core scaling era really is here. i3 is cheaper if you consider the whole system (non-OC mobo easily offsets the CPU cost, no need for a massive cooler on a stock clock, etc..) and performs better in almost every scenario...This leads me to one conclusion. Intel is banking on people making a dumb decision and buying this just because it's OCable.
As the article says, an i3-K CPU would be ideal. However, Intel is too smart to release one. They know it will eat into the margins that it's enjoyed by positioning it's offerings so people feel compelled to buy an i5-K or i7-K .