[Tom's] Benching Intel's Unlocked Pentium G3258

[Cerb]

Unless you are actively running a full antivirus scan or some such I don't see an i3 beating this Pentium @ 4.5+Ghz in single threaded applications.

If they aren't bottlenecked by cache, neither can I. But, we're a good decade past when that mattered. The hold-outs, like expensive CAD software, aren't something you use cheap boxes for anyway (Boxx proves you might not run stock, but then you still don't do cheap). Even single-threaded-per-workload programs tend to be multithreaded or multiprocess, to work on more units at once, like audio, image, and video processing, and web browsing (FI, LAME will be nearly 4x faster on an i5 than it benches in practice, since encoders should be running per track, not per job, and for similar reasons, the browser benches are a joke--it's always the tabs doing idle work that chew up CPU in a way that slows you down, not one loop in a single page being viewed right this second).

A cheap Flight Simulator X box, for example, it looks good for. The broader you want the selection, the more fragile it appears.

 

[escrow4]

People still buy dual cores in 2014? I build boxes to last and its i5 minimum. A piddly old dual core was all the rage back in 2006 . . . .

 

[Cerb]

People still buy dual cores in 2014? I build boxes to last and its i5 minimum. A piddly old dual core was all the rage back in 2006 . . . .

Yes, all the time. Most people don't need more than i3, and some not even that. An i5 isn't going to get someone that can't use the cores anything over an i3, no matter how long they use it for. Also, duals are basically all of the mobile market, since the only Intel quads are the most expensive of i7 models.

This chip, though, appears to be a do-over of the Dual Cores and Celerons from the Core 2 days, just with the latest designs: high OC clocks, but unbalanced fragile performance, and you just know it won't feel as snappy as a higher-end CPU, no matter what the benchmarks can be made to show (Tom's looks pretty balanced, in terms of what and how they tested, IMO).

 

[jpiniero]

People still buy dual cores in 2014? I build boxes to last and its i5 minimum. A piddly old dual core was all the rage back in 2006 . . . .

Dual Core is like 90%+ of Intel's mainstream sales.

 

[Vesku]

you seemed to have missed the key word which was GAMING.

"So 20AP would be better for straight-up productivity over an i3, but for gaming, i3 would be better? Even IB or SB i3? "

Gaming is "straight-up productivity", good to know.

 

[toyota]

"So 20AP would be better for straight-up productivity over an i3, but for gaming, i3 would be better? Even IB or SB i3? "

Gaming is "straight-up productivity", good to know.

are you reading the same thing I am? he looks to be asking if i3 would be better for gaming.

 

[Cerb]

Unless you are actively running a full antivirus scan or some such I don't see an i3 beating this Pentium @ 4.5+Ghz in single threaded applications.

As a P.S.: having A/V running means doing scans on almost all IO as it is being read, and some as it is being written. You can see the effects in Resource Monitor, most of the time, with ease. It's not much of a load for gaming, as that's typically a once per level or area deal, but general office/prod can take quite a beating from A/V, if there isn't enough spare CPU threads for it (if there are, it's generally not noticed at all). That's one of the things that makes i3s feel so much faster than Pentiums in day to day use.

 

[Vesku]

I was addressing the productivity aspect of the posts, such as the claim an OCed Pentium would feel sluggish due to regular background processes. Even before reviews I was saying this unlocked Pentium isn't a great gaming option unless it is specifically to run games the person knows are single threaded: SC2, Flight Simulator X, most pre-2013 games.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Why does that make them a pain to upgrade? Just turn it off in the BIOS once, and you're done. Bye bye secure boot.

But the pre-installed Win8 still has Secure Boot active, and will refuse to boot. At least that was my understanding.

Edit: Let me test this.

Edit: Sheer Brillliance! Thank you. I was able to boot the pre-installed Win8 with my 7790 card with Secure Boot disabled in the BIOS.

I don't know why I thought that Win8 wouldn't boot when Secure Boot was disabled, if it was installed with it enabled. Doesn't seem all that "secure" to me. But hey, I'm happy. I don't have to buy another OS, and install another HDD.

 

[seitur]

Whole problem of unlocked Pentium is that it requires Z87 chipset.

It would be a blast if it would be overclockable on H81, but it's not so it's mostly interesting oddity.

 

[Alatar]

Whole problem of unlocked Pentium is that it requires Z87 chipset.

It would be a blast if it would be overclockable on H81, but it's not so it's mostly interesting oddity.

You can OC it on asus H81 mobos. Other manufacturers will also probably roll out bios updates to allow OCing outside of Z87 and Z79. But asus already did.

 

[seitur]

You can OC it on asus H81 mobos. Other manufacturers will also probably roll out bios updates to allow OCing outside of Z87 and Z79. But asus already did.

Guess we'll have to wait and see whenever other manufacturers will update their alrady released H81 mobos with new BIOS-es and whenever Intel won't block it.

If that will happen then yeah - Anniversary Pentium might be very good budget gamer choice.

 

[blackened23]

Anandtech doesn't do frame rating or any real tests on frame time variance.

They also never do properly CPU limited testing. Don't rely on their articles for any of these spheres of knowledge.

What i'm curious about is why intel isn't sending review samples to anandtech? I wonder if their very close association with AMD's marketing (they bought an entire 'amd' section on AT, in fact) has anything to do with it?

I see neither the Devi's Canyon nor the unlocked pentium being reviewed. Not sure if that's coming down the road or not, though.

 

[NTMBK]

What i'm curious about is why intel isn't sending review samples to anandtech? I wonder if their very close association with AMD's marketing (they bought an entire 'amd' section on AT, in fact) has anything to do with it?

Oh come on, that's just as ridiculous as the AMD fanboys who complain about Anand having a pro-Intel bias. Anandtech has still given plenty of far-from-glowing reviews of AMD products recently- complaints about the cooler on the 290 and 290X, disappointing Kaveri performance, and so on. Collecting AMD stories together in an "AMD Center" doesn't change that. It's just marketing.

 

[jpiniero]

What i'm curious about is why intel isn't sending review samples to anandtech? I wonder if their very close association with AMD's marketing (they bought an entire 'amd' section on AT, in fact) has anything to do with it?

I see neither the Devi's Canyon nor the unlocked pentium being reviewed. Not sure if that's coming down the road or not, though.

Newegg shows the release of DC isn't until Wednesday... maybe you will see a review on Monday or Tuesday.

 

[grimpr]

I would personally take the i3 over the unlocked pentium anytime. Intel is seriously taking advantage or grabbing *ss of overclockers.

 

[sm625]

When you can buy an off lease 4 core 8 thread Xeon workstation for $250, I dont see this pentium being any part of a real budget gaming solution. The machine I'm typing on right now is a xeon i7-920 equivalent with 4GB of RAM that costed $279 with shipping and tax.

 

[Spanners]

What i'm curious about is why intel isn't sending review samples to anandtech? I wonder if their very close association with AMD's marketing (they bought an entire 'amd' section on AT, in fact) has anything to do with it?

I see neither the Devi's Canyon nor the unlocked pentium being reviewed. Not sure if that's coming down the road or not, though.

This is absurd.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Guess we'll have to wait and see whenever other manufacturers will update their alrady released H81 mobos with new BIOS-es and whenever Intel won't block it.

If that will happen then yeah - Anniversary Pentium might be very good budget gamer choice.

I'm still looking around for concrete info on exactly which platforms will permit memory overclocking and/or uncore overclocking for the G3258. My guess would be z87 and z97 only. There are some fairly cheap z87 boards out there, mind you . . . and VRM issues shouldn't crop up no matter how hard you push the G3258. Shouldn't.

 

[Cerb]

I was addressing the productivity aspect of the posts, such as the claim an OCed Pentium would feel sluggish due to regular background processes.

The non-OCed ones do, even with very little clock speed lacking relative to an i3, and with hardly any programs that need all the CPU time to themselves. There's very good reason Intel can get away with charging double for an i3, and why very few business PCs come with anything less.

 

[Stable]

The i3 4330 does very well.

 

[crashtech]

The non-OCed ones do, even with very little clock speed lacking relative to an i3, and with hardly any programs that need all the CPU time to themselves. There's very good reason Intel can get away with charging double for an i3, and why very few business PCs come with anything less.

I think that most participants equating 2C/2T with 2C/4T have not used Haswell i3s extensively; in these latest CPUs, the potential of HT has been fully realized.

 

[blackened23]

Oh come on, that's just as ridiculous as the AMD fanboys who complain about Anand having a pro-Intel bias. Anandtech has still given plenty of far-from-glowing reviews of AMD products recently- complaints about the cooler on the 290 and 290X, disappointing Kaveri performance, and so on. Collecting AMD stories together in an "AMD Center" doesn't change that. It's just marketing.

Fact of the matter is, intel sent review samples out over a week ago to other websites and AT didn't review either chip. So I guess they're buying their own from newegg? I don't know, i'm just speculating here. It isn't exactly uncommon for stuff like that to happen, I know nvidia basically blacklisted tweaktown a long time ago (tweaktown had an editorial on this) and they have to buy their own nvidia hardware (or source it from a willing AIB). Hardware companies can be nitpicky so it seems. Maybe AT is buying their own chips or something. I don't know. I was just speculating anyway. I'm sure they will have a review in the coming days after the official release at retail in any case.

However, I will concede that you are correct that nothing has affected review integrity at AT. Your points are valid there, can't argue that. I still wish for frametime testing which AT still is not doing, but nonethess... I wonder how petty things gets behind the scenes with this sorta thing between hardware vendors and websites.

In any case, I think the unlocked pentium is a pretty great chip for HTPC. The OC'ed benchmarks and OC scaling past stock is pretty impressive, I may just get one for my HTPC which uses an asus H81 mobo. (and it is getting a BIOS for unlocked overclocking..)

 

[exar333]

Whole problem of unlocked Pentium is that it requires Z87 chipset.

It would be a blast if it would be overclockable on H81, but it's not so it's mostly interesting oddity.

You can get a Z87 board for <$50 at MC...

 

[Stable]

Do you guys think this is a worth the savings over an i3? For gaming I mean. I also wonder if it's not a better idea to drop in a haswell Celeron and upgrade to a 4690k or 4790k