[TR] Overclocking Intel's Pentium G3258 'Anniversary Edition' processor

[NTMBK]

http://techreport.com/review/26735/overclocking-intel-pentium-g3258-anniversary-edition-processor

And here's the conclusion:

Take a second to consider what those Crysis 3 results mean. At 4.8GHz, the Pentium G3258 avoids slowdowns much more capably than even AMD's FX-8350. Just like car guys say "there's no replacement for displacement," we've gotta admit that there's no replacement for per-thread performance. In a great many cases, including games, the user experience relies mostly on one single, gnarly thread's execution. With only two cores and two hardware threads at its disposal, the overclocked Pentium G3258 can still feel very snappy thanks to its combination of unusually high revs and prodigious instruction throughput in each clock cycle.

We need to do more testing, but an overclocked G3258 looks to be a truly outstanding gaming CPU—not only on a budget, but just generally compared to much more expensive CPUs.

The all important frame latency graphs:

That is seriously impressive. If you can hit clocks that high on most of these Pentiums, it looks like a great budget gaming choice. The 750k is dethroned.

 

[SPBHM]

3 i7s and no i3...

 

[USER8000]

Actually a few issues with their TR testing as bourne out by the comments.

Firstly,they used high textures and then dropped global system settings down to medium,which means many of the more taxing options are not running,including those which push the CPU.

Plus look at the part which they are testing - its not "Welcome to the Jungle" which multiple comments also mentioned.

PCgameshardware actually saw that in that part of the game HT was effectively used meaning a Core i7 was much faster than the Core i5 and FX8300 series CPUs:

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Crysis-3-PC-235317/Tests/Crysis-3-CPU-Test-1068140/

Its because Crysis3 uses the CPU for grass animations and so on.

They basically tested a part which will not push anything more than a dual core CPU. Look at where the Core i7 4770K is at 4.7GHZ for example??

Anyone who has actually played the game,knows that parts like "Welcome to the Jungle" can really push a multi-threaded load,especially on very high settings.

The other problem is the x264 results they have.

The x264 encoder shows some HT scaling,but look at the TechReport results:
http://techreport.com/r.x/pentium-g3258-oc/x264.gif

They used the newer r2334 encoder unlike many reviews since it supports both AVX2 and FMA2.

The only issue is that xbitslabs has done similar testing with newer encoder types,ie,r2345 and r2358.

The Core i3 results are roughly half that of the Core i7 results which kind of make sense,since they are essentially half a Core i7.

However,look at the Pentium results from the TechReport. The G3258 at stock is exactly half the score of a higher clocked Core i7 with HT. The FX8350 relative position is out of whack too.

An FX8350 only 20% faster than a A10 7850K running at a lower all cores Turbo speed,while lacking L3 cache in a video encoding benchmark??

Really now??

Its like they are attempting to make the G3258 look as good as possible.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Its like they are attempting to make the G3258 look as good as possible.

This. You'd have to be a fool to buy a 2T CPU for gaming anymore, regardless of overclocking potential.

 

[USER8000]

This. You'd have to be a fool to buy a 2T CPU for gaming anymore, regardless of overclocking potential.

Despite what a few people have said already in comments,the reviewer just brushed them off and is probably going to just ignore them. Plus its going to work. Very few people will read comments or forum debate on the validity of results in such reviews,so they can get away with it,so they can make mistakes,have inconsistencies,push whatever they want,etc and 99.9% will be none the wiser.

It really is all very depressing at times.

 

[Homeles]

Despite what a few people have said already in comments,the reviewer just brushed them off and is probably going to just ignore them. Plus its going to work. Very few people will read comments or forum debate on the validity of results in such reviews,so they can get away with it,so they can make mistakes,have inconsistencies,push whatever they want,etc and 99.9% will be none the wiser.

It really is all very depressing at times.

Scott said he might take a look at Crysis 3 at higher settings.

You can complain about Scott Wasson all you'd like, but he's done some very important work to ensure that GPU manufacturers care about smoothness, and not just hitting high FPS numbers. He's also done some weird things too, like his blowup over AMD's Trinity preview allowance. Nobody's perfect, but I'd argue he's a force for good.

The state of the review industry is rather poor as a whole, though, despite the best intentions of some. I'm half tempted to create my own serious site, as I have a lot of ideas that I believe would significantly improve the delivery of performance metrics to consumers, but I don't like the idea of devoting a lot of time to it. I'd like to pursue an EE degree, and I'm worried about getting distracted from that goal...

 

[cbn]

This. You'd have to be a fool to buy a 2T CPU for gaming anymore, regardless of overclocking potential.

Pentium 3258 is just fine for budget gaming.

In fact, Tom's even recommends it over the AMD Athlon x4 750K quad core.

See the updated Tom's "best gaming cpu for the money" article (July):

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-2.html

 

[USER8000]

Scott said he might take a look at Crysis 3 at higher settings.

You can complain about Scott Wasson all you'd like, but he's done some very important work to ensure that GPU manufacturers care about smoothness, and not just hitting high FPS numbers. He's also done some weird things too, like his blowup over AMD's Trinity preview allowance. Nobody's perfect, but I'd argue he's a force for good.

Yes,but you have to be careful of giving him a pass due to prior excellent work - he might have done good stuff,but it does not change the fact his results are contradicted by a very well known site,xbitslabs,who are hardly rank amateurs too.

I find a lot of reviewers don't really like criticism,which I can kind of understand,but having known mates in more research orientated areas,its about par and expected.

We as enthusiasts need to keep the review sites real IMHO and on their toes!!

The state of the review industry is rather poor as a whole, though, despite the best intentions of some. I'm half tempted to create my own serious site, as I have a lot of ideas that I believe would significantly improve the delivery of performance metrics to consumers, but I don't like the idea of devoting a lot of time to it. I'd like to pursue an EE degree, and I'm worried about getting distracted from that goal...

+1 Homeles.

 

[Roland00Address]

I am not trying to start a fanboy war with this comment but

Intel is really putting a hurting on AMD with the DIY crowd that likes tinkering. AMD APUs have their certain places (like better graphics with no video card) but Intel seems to be the better choice in the majority of situations. Since the majority of situations where you need cpu power you also want single threaded performance, and intel prices are so cheap for even their cheapest skus.

What do they have still? Small Form Factors that do care about graphics? A little cheaper than an i3 if you need the most multithreaded for cheap but do not want to overclock such as the Athlon x4 quad cores? Cheaper than an i5 if you do not want to overclock with the FX 6 and 8 cores? AVX instructions for cheaper?

----

newegg prices

$50 Intel Haswell Celeron G1840 at 2.8 ghz
$75 Intel Haswell Pentium G3258 overclockable cpu at 3.2 ghz
$125 Intel Haswell Core i3 4130 at 3.4 ghz
$190 Intel Haswell Core i5 4460 at 3.2 turbos to 3.4 ghz
$240 Intel Haswell Core i5 4490k overclockable at 3.5 turbos to 3.9 ghz, Devil Canyon
$300 Intel Haswell Core i7 4790s at 3.2 ghz turbos to 4.0 ghz
$340 Intel Haswell Core i7 4790k overclockable at 4.0 turbos to 4.4 ghz, Devil Canyon

 

[Homeles]

Yes,but you have to be careful of giving him a pass due to prior excellent work - he might have done good stuff,but it does not change the fact his results are contradicted by a very well known site,xbitslabs,who are hardly rank amateurs too.

I find a lot of reviewers don't really like criticism,which I can kind of understand,but having known mates in more research orientated areas,its about par and expected.

We as enthusiasts need to keep the review sites real IMHO and on their toes!!

Definitely. You just have to keep an eye on how you're delivering your criticism though. Insults aren't going to work with anybody. It's best to tell them what you liked about the review, and then mix in your concerns in your message.

At any rate, I feel like the Pentium's not being given enough credit by readers. It's something like $60 less than an i3... nearly half the price. There's no doubt that the i3 is more capable in many scenarios, but I'd argue that paying twice as much isn't worth it. The i3 should be skipped over, IMO. If you don't have the budget to commit to get an i5, get the Pentium, and either pocket the savings, or spend it elsewhere.

 

[cbn]

I'm half tempted to create my own serious site, as I have a lot of ideas that I believe would significantly improve the delivery of performance metrics to consumers, but I don't like the idea of devoting a lot of time to it. I'd like to pursue an EE degree, and I'm worried about getting distracted from that goal...

If you haven't used Wordpress before I bet you could pick it up pretty fast. (There are a lot of really good step by step instruction videos on You Tube showing a person how to do this with no steps skipped. Examples of good You tube channels having these demonstrations: Tyler Moore, 77webstudio and wpskulptor)

 

[USER8000]

Definitely. You just have to keep an eye on how you're delivering your criticism though. Insults aren't going to work with anybody. It's best to tell them what you liked about the review, and then mix in your concerns in your message.

At any rate, I feel like the Pentium's not being given enough credit by readers. It's something like $60 less than an i3... nearly half the price. There's no doubt that the i3 is more capable in many scenarios, but I'd argue that paying twice as much isn't worth it. The i3 should be skipped over, IMO. If you don't have the budget to commit to get an i5, get the Pentium, and either pocket the savings, or spend it elsewhere.

As with anything it depends on what mix of games the rig will be running and whether the CPU will be upgraded and how tight the budget is I suppose. Even here in the UK,the Pentium is £50 to £55 including shipping. Core i3s can be had for around £75 shipped quite often.

Sadly,even though we are better than many European countries for prices,we don't get some of the good deals you find in the US!

TBH,I kind of wish Intel had an unlocked Core i3,that truly would have been a decent all round budget CPU,but I can understand why they would not want to do this!

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Pentium 3258 is just fine for budget gaming.

In fact, Tom's even recommends it over the AMD Athlon x4 750K quad core.

See the updated Tom's "best gaming cpu for the money" article (July):

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-2.html

Toms also has this to say:

This outcome is particularly interesting since the frame rate figures in the two previous charts suggested such good behavior from the Pentium. What we see here instead suggests the dual-core, non-Hyper-Threaded processor suffers incurs more quantifiable stuttering, even paired to a very fast GeForce GTX Titan, compared to the other contenders able to handle four threads.

The Pentium is fine for benchmarks, not so much for actual gaming.

 

[Homeles]

Toms also has this to say:



The Pentium is fine for benchmarks, not so much for actual gaming.

It's a $70 processor, what do you expect?

 

[Madpacket]

Well I must be a moron as I just picked up one of these to build a new HTPC/Steam/Shield Streaming/NAS box with.

I was seriously contemplating buying a 4790K but breaking out the spreadsheet and laying it all out it was an choice to go with a 750Ti, 8GB RAM, 128GB SDD boot drive plus a feature packed AsRock Z97 ITX board, and with all of that I'm just over the price of a 4790K alone.

It'll be interesting comparing this Pentium chip to my mildly overclocked 3770 dedicated rig to see if the minimum framerates / microstutter really are a problem but I suspect I won't mind too much playing from the couch with an xbox controller. As a competitive BF4 rig I'd still recommend something with more cores but in most cases this will be fast enough.

Next year when the 14nm chips hit I'll revisit upgrading the CPU to something maybe Broadwell based. Fun Fun!

 

[AnonymouseUser]

It's a $70 processor, what do you expect?

I would expect a tech forum to recognize it's shortcomings and not recommend it for gaming. Dual-core is so 2005.

 

[cbn]

Frame time variance charts from the Tom's test (two more games to come in the next post):

 

[cbn]

 

[cbn]

Looking over those charts, it looks like Pentium 3258 wins 4 out 7 games (vs. Athlon x4 750K) as far as frame time variation goes.

 

[Madpacket]

Ok here's some preliminary testing of my G3258 tonight on stock cooling. I was able to hit 4.6 ghz prime stable but the temps were getting a little toasty. I backed off to 4.5 @ 1.25 vcore and will run p95 overnight. My Killawatt under p95 is measuring 82 watts, I'm using an EVGA 600W 80+ power supply (not the most efficient).

I think what you can takeaway is even with the stock heatsink/fan you'll be able to turn these up to 11. Aftermarket cooling will be necessary to go beyond 4.5/6ghz.

Not bad for a 70 dollars processor

 

[cbn]

Ok here's some preliminary testing of my G3258 tonight on stock cooling. I was able to hit 4.6 ghz prime stable but the temps were getting a little toasty. I backed off to 4.5 @ 1.25 vcore and will run p95 overnight.

I think what you can takeaway is even with the stock heatsink/fan you'll be able to turn these up to 11. Aftermarket cooling will be necessary to go beyond 4.5/6ghz.

Not bad for a 70 dollars processor

What were your temps at 4.6 Ghz with the stock cooler? Ambient temp (roughly)?

 

[Madpacket]

With real temp it was showing high 70's / low 80's at 4.6Ghz with around 20 celcius to tjmax. This was with an auto selected 1.32 volts though so I'm pretty sure it could run at a lower voltage. I'll play around more with it this evening.

 

[dud]

Was wondering how much of a deal this MB/CPU combo was:

Nevermind ... Newegg sold out and removed.

 

[know of fence]

This pentium should be the best thing for last gen games, considering the OC, as well as getting rid of CPU bound slow-downs, yet it can't even beat a stinking i3@3.5 GHz, especially when it comes to minimum frame rates and frame time variance!?

There must be a different bottleneck, maybe cache, maybe RAM, will an i3 be just as bad with HT turned off? Or maybe they just haven't tested the right stuff. Crysis 3, FFS, a game that nobody bought, and the rest are fairly demanding PC centric games.

 

[formulav8]

It's a $70 processor, what do you expect?

To not be forced by Intel to buy a Z chipset board to oc.

Anyways, H series would be a nice fit for the Pentium K. Typical Intel though, no thanks.