Intel Pentium G3258 CPU Review: Haswell, Unlocked, For $75

[filippi]

Pk+z97 now i5k next year is indeed a strong proposition for a budget-oriented build. Can this kill i3 budget gaming builds?

 

[Onus]

Before determining if this will be good in a [multipurpose] HTPC, one piece of data is missing, and that is heat.
Even a little Sempron is enough for HTPC-only duties, so it's got to be in a PC that will do more. This Pentium clearly needs to be overclocked to do well there, particularly long-term, but does that make it hot? Especially with the "glitch" causing higher-than-expected idle power usage, can it be cooled with minimal and silent fans? This may be a great budget [m]ATX chip, but it might not be suitable for the smaller, thermally-limited mini-ITX enclosures. I'm a little surprised temp numbers weren't included in this review...

 

[Onus]

Before we get our hopes up about the upcoming (this month!) SBM, remember this chip was probably not available when they were spec'ed.
If that is the case, I will be ruthlessly deleting any answers in their discussions that say this chip "should have" been used.
In September though? I hope we see it!

 

[de5_Roy]

Before we get our hopes up about the upcoming (this month!) SBM, remember this chip was probably not available when they were spec'ed.
If that is the case, I will be ruthlessly deleting any answers in their discussions that say this chip "should have" been used.
In September though? I hope we see it!

i thought parts would be ordered early next month and then sbm would go live in august. i'll be witing till q4, then...

 

[somebodyspecial]

Good chip to get into a z97 as cheap as possible with decent power, but was shocked to see you don't turn on CUDA in adobe. It's a check box. You're running a titan, at least check the box on ONE chip to show the difference. Why the hate on this site for cuda? Please re-run the adobe stuff with the CUDA checkbox filled. Why anyone would run OpenCL with an nvidia card baffles me. They hate OpenCL and will continue to if cuda is faster in everything. You are absolutely retarded if you buy an NV card and ignore cuda. Why not simulate real life in at least ONE test. It requires nothing more than a checkmark to get this done. NV co-developed the MPE for cuda so why would you avoid it? Not sure how much of your test would be accelerated (depends on what it's doing) but surely some of it would be. Surely the readers would want to see what happens when you turn on cuda right? 65% of your users HAVE CUDA if they own discrete.

Edit: One more thing that might be interesting to users of adobe; Does turning on cuda make your junk cpu suddenly quite the king? IF you turn it on for the pentium does it vault it to the front?

https://forums.adobe.com/message/5081640
Harm Millard saying it can speed up by a factor or 12 in Premiere.
"the average gain from using a CUDA capable video card over software is around a factor 12 for rendering."

Clearly not getting much from OpenCL in this article over software/cpu mode right? Cuda should be tested.
http://ppbm5.com/Test.html
"A CUDA/MPE card makes a huge difference in performance and improves quality of the output over software MPE. "

It's in Photoshop also, so check the dang box and allow us to see OpenCL vs. CPU vs. CUDA. What is that 3secs to check a box? A few more minutes to put it in the chart as a third bar? I'm confused. This site always claims it's difficult to test OpenCL vs. Cuda, but yet here you can with a simple box and you're using titan. Baffling.

 

[Rakeen70210]

Really though, what is the point of a "budget" system if you are forced to buy a cooler and a damn expensive mobo just to get the same performance as an i3? Hell you would think that its better to just buy the i5, stick with the integrated graphics and then buy the GPU later when you wanna play all the new crazy games. Unless this thing can get decent overclocks with stock fan and a cheap mobo there is really no point in getting this. But I do think its better over the 750K now since the benchmarks show the stock pentium to be as fast as an overclocked 750K.

 

[elbert]

Wow the 4690K is 3 times more and only outperforms by 8fps in arma3. This could be a bad sales pitch for Intel. Granted it beats the amd but at the price point of the mobo the review should have had an fx-4300. Still would have about the same results but the article should have focus on the 2 choice a customer would make. Hope we see this cpu up against the fx-4300 in the next review.

 

[logainofhades]

Actually some non Z87/Z97 Asrock boards do offer an overclocking feature. Taken from the H81M-DGS R2.0 manual.

Non-Z OC
Non-Z OC allows users with a K-Series Haswell processor to overclock their non
Z87 chipset motherboards.

 

[Novuake]

Actually some non Z87/Z97 Asrock boards do offer an overclocking feature. Taken from the H81M-DGS R2.0 manual.

Non-Z OC
Non-Z OC allows users with a K-Series Haswell processor to overclock their non
Z87 chipset motherboards.

Only older revisions during that period before the Intel lockup.

 

[logainofhades]

That is a brand new board. Even the H97 pro4 has this feature.

 

[Novuake]

That is a brand new board. Even the H97 pro4 has this feature.

Well damn, would you look at that> Nicely spotted.

 

[Rakeen70210]

Really though, what is the point of a "budget" system if you are forced to buy a cooler and a damn expensive mobo just to get the same performance as an i3? Hell you would think that its better to just buy the i5, stick with the integrated graphics and then buy the GPU later when you wanna play all the new crazy games. Unless this thing can get decent overclocks with stock fan and a cheap mobo there is really no point in getting this. But I do think its better over the 750K now since the benchmarks show the stock pentium to be as fast as an overclocked 750K.

 

[logainofhades]

That is a brand new board. Even the H97 pro4 has this feature.

Well damn, would you look at that> Nicely spotted.

Yea, I almost want to get a pentium 3258 and that H81 board just to try it out. :lol:

 

[Awesom3GamerA3G]

Pentium processors are a throwback for me.

 

[ykki]

Why no fx 6300 ?

 

[ykki]

I mean that it is about 30 dollars cheaper than the i3 , has a tdp of 95w (5 less than the 750k) , features 6 cores and last has a clock rate of 3.5gz?

 

[wmansir]

I have to say I find it amusing and a bit absurd that writers, and perhaps intel itself, are referencing the Celeron 300A when discussing this chip. The 300A was basically a mistake that I'm sure Intel wished had never happened. It could fairly easily be overclocked to tie and in some cases beat their flagship 450mhz Pentium II, a chip that cost about $500 more.

This Pentium is so crippled that when overclocked it can barely beat the chip one tier above it, which only costs about $50-65 more. It cannot come close to even their mid-level performance chips, let alone the top end. Once you factor in the additional cost of the hardware required to obtain decent overclocking results it's arguably better to just buy and run a stock i3.

Now, one could say it's like the 300A in that you get a very significant % increase in performance from stock. But there is a big difference between bumping a relatively cheap mid-level budget chip to become the fastest mainstream chip on the planet and bumping a bottom rung budget chip to a mid-ranged budget chip.

 

[StormyIV]

A 75 dollar CPU paired up with a 1 thousand dollar graphic card. Yup thats clearly aimed at the people building a budget system.

 

[Novuake]

A 75 dollar CPU paired up with a 1 thousand dollar graphic card. Yup thats clearly aimed at the people building a budget system.

Its done for a reason. Isolating performance bottlenecks. Hodor...

 

[logainofhades]

It is a marketing ploy aimed at shifting Z boards, not processors. Earlier famous clocking chips could be cranked up on any board with a non brand name bios to some degree or other. Notably the Q6600 by 25% at stock volts on a £40 mATX board. This new cpu is barely fit for purpose.
If they wanted to shift these chips they would have set the stock clock at 4 gig to make sense with cheap boards.

I can see you didn't see my earlier post about Asrock implementing overclocking on non Z chipsets.

 

[HomeSkillenSlice]

Looks like the cannons have officially arrived. To bad u need a Z series to use it. I bet AMD was s****** bricks for sometime ahaha.

 

[logainofhades]

This board has the feature I was talking about earlier.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H81M-DGS%20R2.0/index.us.asp?cat=Manual

 

[unknown9122]

What a monster... I hope Intel keeps putting out these unlocked Pentiums, not just on anniversaries. They are a great budget option.

 

[Cazalan]

Thanks for the review but a more reasonable GPU ($200-400) would have been nice to see. A $1400 Titan GTX with a $70 cpu. lolz

 

[vertexx]

Disappointed you didn't use a 760k with higher speed memory. 4.3 GHz is a below average overclock, and most people are using an overclocked 760k with 2400Mhz memory and also with an NB overclock. It makes a big difference for 760k due to lack of L3 cache. Plus, game selection here leaves a lot to be desired for a true comparison.

I'm excited about the new Pentium G - I have one on order - but this article didn't really do the 750/760k justice. I'm not saying it would have turned the tables, but it would have been good to see you guys tweak a 760k properly.