[SOLVED] How long will the Pentium G3258 be a viable processor?

[CompGee]

Planning on a system upgrade in 04/2016 and can only afford a Pentium G3258. How long will that be a viable processor? Thanks!

 

[LookItsRain]

Its not really that viable today. It can work and give you an ok experience, but suffers because its a dual core without hyperthreading. If you can stretch to an i3, it would be worth it.

 

[CompGee]

Just saw this on Newegg:

Pros: Wow! Where to begin!? This thing handles everything my Xeon 1230 V2 did with ease!

This is what I run on a daily basis at the same time:

1. 15 Firefox Tabs
2. 2 Monitors
3. Plex Server (Movie Streaming 1080P to 2 devices!)
4. BTorrent
5. 1080P Movie running in the background
6. Word Processing
7. VMWARE Work Station With Windows 8.1

WOW!!! I wish I had this much sooner!! I ran everything above at the same time with 6GB out of 8GB (I have total) memory usage while CPU hitting at 50-70% utilization!!!!!!! And here's the kicker!! It's fast enough for me using this thing on a regular hard drive and I haven't even over clocked it yet!! (RUNNING STOCK!!!!). I can't wait to drop an SSD on this thing!!!

So far, gaming performs excellent in CS GO! I haven't tested many games, but so far the performance this thing gives is definitely worth more than $50!!

Cons: If I had to list a con, I would say I feel like a thief for paying very little for the performance this processor gives!

Other Thoughts: I've been in IT for several years and came from several intel and and processors and overall, this thing is a must have if you are on a budget!! Pair it with a decent SSD and video card and you will see why this thing is still a good seller!

Of course, this is a 2 core processor, so if you are heavily running video converting applications or if you are processing lots of streaming, then I may look intro an i5, but this G3258 has quick sync to help with faster video processing/rendering!

 

[Golfis]

It actually depends on your usage patterns and expectations. For casual tasks like browsing, office work, light photo and video editing will probably suffice. Furthermore benchmarks have shown that when it is paired with a capable cooler, it can be overclocked for some surprising results. That being said do not expect good performance on games that actually do benefit for more than two cores. As time goes on more and more games will start to utilize more cores then the lack of power will be more evident. As the new generation of graphics cards will start rolling out sometime in 2016 you might even face a bottleneck issue with a dual core cpu. If i were in your shoes, i would search for a used quad core, inside your price range, that under a capable cooler would be able to achieve atleast an overclock of 25% its stock clock-speed

 

[LookItsRain]

Just saw this on Newegg:

Pros: Wow! Where to begin!? This thing handles everything my Xeon 1230 V2 did with ease!

This is what I run on a daily basis at the same time:

1. 15 Firefox Tabs
2. 2 Monitors
3. Plex Server (Movie Streaming 1080P to 2 devices!)
4. BTorrent
5. 1080P Movie running in the background
6. Word Processing
7. VMWARE Work Station With Windows 8.1

WOW!!! I wish I had this much sooner!! I ran everything above at the same time with 6GB out of 8GB (I have total) memory usage while CPU hitting at 50-70% utilization!!!!!!! And here's the kicker!! It's fast enough for me using this thing on a regular hard drive and I haven't even over clocked it yet!! (RUNNING STOCK!!!!). I can't wait to drop an SSD on this thing!!!

So far, gaming performs excellent in CS GO! I haven't tested many games, but so far the performance this thing gives is definitely worth more than $50!!

Cons: If I had to list a con, I would say I feel like a thief for paying very little for the performance this processor gives!

Other Thoughts: I've been in IT for several years and came from several intel and and processors and overall, this thing is a must have if you are on a budget!! Pair it with a decent SSD and video card and you will see why this thing is still a good seller!

Of course, this is a 2 core processor, so if you are heavily running video converting applications or if you are processing lots of streaming, then I may look intro an i5, but this G3258 has quick sync to help with faster video processing/rendering!

My 100 dollar tablet can do all that at once, for 50 dollars, it has great performance, yes. But, if you intend on doing any gaming beyond counter strike, which is a very easy game to run, the g3258 will suffer.

Also, the guy never listed what he upgraded from, or his gpu, if he upgraded from a pentium 4 to a 3258, i can see why he wrote this review.

 

[Sleetz]

I would consider the Pentium G3258 outdated but it is still viable to overclock with a decent cooler which can help improve the performance.

 

[Mr5oh]

I started with my HTPC / Emulator box with a G3258, hooked to a 1080p TV. With the on-board graphics, it struggled with videos full screen. Once I added a video card (GTX 750 TI) all my video playback issues went away. However with GameCube / WII emulation the G3258 really struggled with many popular titles at 1080. At lower resolutions it was better, but only with some other things turned off. It was alright, but I ended up just buying an I5 for that machine.

As for PC games I generally only play those on my Desktop, so I can say how they did on the G3258. Here are my benchmarks with over clocking results , it compares the G3258 to my 4690K, and my 3570K build.