[Adam] The Pentium G3258 Cheap Overclocking Experiment

[Karadjgne]

What I wanna know is why it seems we have been lied to all these years about so much. I mean really, all these gpus packed to the gills with massive bandwidths, high clocked memory, huge amounts of cuda etc, and thenalong comes Maxwell with 1/2 of this, 1/4 of that, sucks up only 63w, doesn't even need external power and is almost as good as its bigger brother the gtx760. And now we get reliable OC of 4.4 on anantiquated 'H' mobo, when everyone knows you can't OC without a 'Z' board? WTH! I'm starting to feel like a sheep that has had the wool in my eyes for years.

 

[RedJaron]

What I wanna know is why it seems we have been lied to all these years about so much. I mean really, all these gpus packed to the gills with massive bandwidths, high clocked memory, huge amounts of cuda etc, and thenalong comes Maxwell with 1/2 of this, 1/4 of that, sucks up only 63w, doesn't even need external power and is almost as good as its bigger brother the gtx760. And now we get reliable OC of 4.4 on anantiquated 'H' mobo, when everyone knows you can't OC without a 'Z' board? WTH! I'm starting to feel like a sheep that has had the wool in my eyes for years.

Basic answer: newer architecture.

First, the 750 is completely different architecture than the 760. And performance-wise, it's more than a step behind the 760. However, the idea behind it is not unlike going from the P4 to the Pentium M and Core architecture: efficiency and elegance opposed to more power and brute strength. I think you'll see this trend continue in GPUs, and I welcome it.

The H81 board isn't exactly "antiquated" considering it's only the previous generation. And I think it's safe to say the H81 is a lot more capable than the old H61 boards. Also keep in mind that Haswell has VRM on the chip itself, so power management is less about the mboard than it used to. Finally, the G3258 is roughly half the TDP of the i7-2600K. You simply don't need as much power to run it, so you don't need 12+ phases like you used to.

As for requiring a Z board to OC, that's a software restriction, not a hardware one. It seems mboard manufacturers had an agreement with Intel that the "lesser" boards wouldn't expose the clock multipliers. There was no hardware reason the older chipsets couldn't OC, they were simply restricted from doing so through firmware.

So really, the only place we were "lied to" was about the boards. The older chipsets would have OC'd just fine had they not been locked down. And this has happened many times in the past. It's just like the old nForce boards that could unlock Athlon XPs.

 

[Karadjgne]

Heh. I know, I know... Progress. The unstoppable beast. But the boards MSI sent, were just that, regular everyday boards that could be found in any BestBuy. No firmware scruples. The unlock was on the CPU, so you could slap that Pentium on any H81, B85 etc, and it would be unlocked. That's an Intel deal... So, makes me wonder, has anyone really ever tried to OC a 'K' on an H board? Or are Intel cpu's 'double locked', where not only must the cpu be a 'K' but must read in BIOS that the mobo is 'Z', and that Pentium just had those restrictions removed.

 

[rayden54]

Regarding the overclocking capable B and H series motherboards, I distinctly remember hearing the same thing just after they released Haswell. If I remember correctly Intel did something to disable that option?

What's the chances that happens again?

 

[Karadjgne]

LOL, I'm used to playing games on my computer.... now it turns out my computer is playing games on me... The Irony..

 

[Computer LVR]

I prefer my build 150 dollars for an amd fx 6300 and asus m5a97 R2.0 at microcenter

not the LE version

 

[Computer LVR]

[No message]

 

[fandroid]

Why not use a $109 AMD FX 6300?

 

[Christopher Estep]

And it still costs more than a GTX750Ti AND uses more power? (The most miserly - in terms of power requirements - GTX760 is the ASUS GTX760 DirectCu II, and it still requires a 6+2 PCI power feed; the EVGA GTX750Ti SC uses nothing beyond what comes over the PCI Express bus - in fact, it uses LESS power than not just any GTX760, but less than even EVGA's own GT640.

 

[winterborn]

PLEASE do this review right and eliminate all the non budget parts.
Put in a 750ti/760 or R9 270/280 and only 8 gigs of memory etc. so we can see where the sweet spot is for a true budget CPU/GPU is at.

You have all the parts, now just put in a budget card and overclock them to see what brand is the budget gaming champ. Do a short build off like this, AMD 750/760K + cheap board of same price and a R9 270. Then compare it with a Intel 3258 + cheap board of the same price and a 750ti. Over clock the cards as well so we can finally see the single monitor 1080 30-60fps budget gameing sweet spot.

 

[fkr]

I have been recommending exactly this type of motherboard and CPU combo. stick this with a 750ti and you can even get a good but inexpensive power supply. put this combo into the next system builders lineup and watch it kill the competition for performance per dollar. and anyone who helps on the forums here knows that there are allot of people asking for a sub $500 build that will game at medium settings (many still with a 720p monitor). this is the build for them and they can have fun overclocking.

quick example, it has a nice crucial 300r case an overpowered seasonic 650 w power supply and a CM hyper 212 CPU cooler. and runs a gtx 750ti for under $450. you could use a r260 or 270 if you prefer but this is the gist of it all

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor ($69.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($22.99 @ Micro Center)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($48.38 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair XMS3 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($52.91 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB Video Card ($114.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: XFX 650W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($49.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $444.23
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-07-30 05:35 EDT-0400

 

[fkr]

as a side note i can get my above build down to less than a new console and it will destroy the console in quality and fps.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Urgh, hit the BBCode button please.

 

[fkr]

yeh i know and sorry. it is really late and the beer is flowing. since it is not a real build for somebody i was lazy. but since you asked and it is much easier to read.

 

[Phillip Wager]

Honestly for budget builds like this the whole point is to save money on the cpu and get a bigger graphics card. for the same money as an i3 and a 750ti you can get the pentium, overclock it and get a a R9 270x

however people recommending the 750ti for budget builds really needs to look at Tom's "best gpu for the money" guide where it simply puts the 750ti in "honerable mention" because the r7 250x is cheaper and more powerful than the 750ti. but honestly for pennies more you can have the r7 265 or a r9 270 if you can find one on sale these two graphics cards are honestly what i would call the minimum to have a satisfactory gaming experience from a frame rate/image quality stand point as fast as a 128bit gpu is a 256bit bus GPU based on the same architecture will always be a lot better. . The AMD graphics is perfect for this lower CPU power application because of mantle API will give a big performance boost and there are dozens of mantle api titles coming out in 2015. The 750ti is only recomended for people who bought a computer from hp or dell or something and want to upgrade their graphics card but cant cough up the extra $$ to upgrade their power supply or for people who need a really short graphics card.

 

[Mac266]

^ this

 

[richardgal]

The Pentium G3258 costs 100$ alone where I live. F*ck the Hungarian government. I'm leaving to the UK...

 

[fkr]

arguing over GPU's that are all selling within $20 of each other is pointless because it should come down to who ever has the best price within your budget at that point and time. the 265 and the 750ti are both good cards and fit the needs for a dual core cpu. If you are at the top of your budget and you had to decide between a better cpu cooler or going for the 265 then it is a choice to be made. I would rather the cpu run cooler and quieter but that is just me.

 

[f-14]

Chris Angelini sorry bro, some of these commentators read about as well as my 8 year old niece with A.D.D. listens.

my questions is did you watch the synthetic test renders on the pentium?
i'm not sure why but i have been getting some feed back on stuttering issues in 3D rendering for CAD as well as fast play games like MMO's. i'm told the issue is the 3D modeling rotation or aspect rotation stutters really bad to the point it's almost chop (i blame the graphics chip) and it also sounds like any fast action in MMO's where the amount of players increases the (frame drop?) stuttering. i've stopped by and watched at the customers offices/shops and i see it. i am unable to test the machines with different cooling solutions and increasing the ram didn't seem to help. i'm not able to isolate the issue to a heat problem or as a thruput problem and all the same parts in a different platform (H/Z) and chip (i3/i5/i7/xeon) system don't show this. i'm going to hazard it's a chip/chipset limitation?

+1jkr

Karadjgne the power requirements are tied to the graphics cards demand of 18amps and 36amps which are only provided by the higher power supplies. the newer chips have had a considerable die shrink which doesn't require as much power, but PSU makers are finally starting to make lower end PSU's with the required amps which is curious since they were using the higher watts to achieve the amps requirements with some trick of parts coils, current loops and all, which was not cheap! i won't elaborate because i don't remember clearly and i don't want to take the time to review my books and do the formula equations based on the visual parts i see in the high amp psu's from 5 years ago vs the parts absent in the lower watt psu's then and the current lower watt psu's of today and then simplify that into bottle feeding words you'll understand, just don't have it in me to bother wasting a half+ day for what used to take me an hour.
i've finally learned being old isn't what makes you slow, it's just stack overflow from too much minutiae supplemental data you didn't have on sideband contributing when you were younger!

 

[schau314]

Interesting article. I am curious as to how the current microcenter z97 gaming motherboard and g3258 will compare to this overclocking wise. At 100 dollars it seems like a fair competitor at the moment.

 

[silverblue]

Richard Leadbetter? That's a name I've not heard in years. Interesting article... cheers.

 

[RedJaron]

Heh. I know, I know... Progress. The unstoppable beast. But the boards MSI sent, were just that, regular everyday boards that could be found in any BestBuy. No firmware scruples. The unlock was on the CPU, so you could slap that Pentium on any H81, B85 etc, and it would be unlocked. That's an Intel deal... So, makes me wonder, has anyone really ever tried to OC a 'K' on an H board? Or are Intel cpu's 'double locked', where not only must the cpu be a 'K' but must read in BIOS that the mobo is 'Z', and that Pentium just had those restrictions removed.

Reread the article, specifically the bottom of page 1.

Then word started spreading that old CPU microcode allowed non-Z core logic to manipulate clock multipliers. Officially, this was a no-no for motherboard vendors to expose [sic]publically.
...
After a quick flash to a beta firmware we found, the H81M-P33 picked up Intel’s Pentium G3258, opened up ratios as high as 80x, and sent us on our way.

The chipsets have the capability to mess with the clock multiplier, but it's up to the firmware whether that ability is accessible. So, no, not any H81 could unlock it, just some that had the correct firmware. And yes, there are other reports of people OCing a K on a non-Z board. So it sounds like there is no "double lock" as you call it that the CPUs have to detect a Z chipset to allow themselves to be unlocked.

Regarding the overclocking capable B and H series motherboards, I distinctly remember hearing the same thing just after they released Haswell. If I remember correctly Intel did something to disable that option?

What's the chances that happens again?

Intel pressured the mfrs to patch the firmware so the lesser boards wouldn't allow OCing through the UEFI.

 

[Crashman]

Congrats Chris for getting to the bottom of this, I think you just saved Paul a bunch of picking time for the next SBM

Are you seriously running the Athlon on DDR3-1600 RAM? Please confirm as it's too difficult to be sure with all of the ridiculous adware you have baked into this article.

Are you seriously suggesting that it's a big problem? Because the only big differences I've seen occur when you're using integrated graphics, and this comparison had a graphics card.

 

[ozicom]

Well,
I'm curious about quicksync capabilities of 4th gen intel cpu's. And when looking around i can't find a test made between 4th gen pentiums and core i3s and core i5s and of course core i7s. I want to know if there's a difference between them. Cause in Intel's page it only says that cpu has quicksync or not.

 

[fkr]

Congrats Chris for getting to the bottom of this, I think you just saved Paul a bunch of picking time for the next SBM

not quite crash, a 10 dollar price cut on a 760k would even things up IMO, not to mention the temps

it will be close but the intel is $20 cheaper on newegg and that will be who they use. $69 to $89 right now in favor of intel