[SOLVED] Overclocked G3258

[Titanion]

Bought a GA-Z97X-UD3H with a 8GB of G.Skill DDR3 ram and a mystery CPU in it. Of course I hoped it would be a 4770K, but it was a G3258. I wasn't expecting the CPU to be much, and the board and ram are good. Have two more G.Skill sticks on the way to reach 16GB of ram. This will be for my computer out in my garage, man cave.

I was going to do Crossfire HD 7870s in it, taken from my computer in the house. I just upgraded to a single RX 570 4GB. But I read that the G3258 does not handle Crossfire very well. For older games, NWN2, Skyrim, Divinity Sin, Baldur's Gate 3 when it comes out, maybe Dying Light with my son, with that G3258 CPU will Crossfire be better than a single HD 7870?

But it apparently it is unlocked and overclocks like crazy.

My garage computer currently has an old ASUS Socket 775 Quad Core Q6600 running at 3.6Ghz.

What can I expect out of this CPU? I am shopping for a 4770K, but not sure I want to drop that $100.

But I am going to spend a lot of time in my garage this summer.

 

[Supernova1138]

The problem with the G3258 is it only has 2 cores and 2 threads, that means it cannot run a lot of modern games without absolutely horrendous stuttering even with a high overclock. If you only want to play older games like Skyrim it might be okay, but forget about anything designed to run on current gen consoles eg. Dying Light.

 

[Barty1884]

What can I expect out of this CPU? I am shopping for a 4770K, but not sure I want to drop that $100.

Really depends on your expectations - the G3258 will overclock like a champ... >4.5GHz should be no problem, and the one I had tapped out at 4.8GHz.

My GF's son had it after me, and he was perfectly happy for general day-to-day use and gaming on older titles.

It's a Dual core than lacks HyperThreading. It was a novelty and very interesting to play with at the time, but shortly thereafter, the viability of a strict DualCore (with no HT) went out the window. So you're going to be extremely limited for modern, relatively demanding titles.

But I read that the G3258 does not handle Crossfire very well.

I've never heard such a thing? At the time, provided you overclocked the chip, there wouldn't be any limitation simply by virtue of it being a G3258.

Personally, I wouldn't look to pair anything much stronger than a single 7870 with it. It's a nice pairing.
HOWEVER, since you already have two of them, there's no harm in trying. If you're playing older titles that wouldn't struggle on a strict Dual Core CPU and it has decent CFx support, there's no harm (beyond power consumption, of course).

 

[Titanion]

I think I read it here last night about SLI/Crossfire.

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Intel-Pentium-G3258/Rating/2434

The G3258's Achilles heel is its poor multi-core performance which is over 50% weaker than the group leaders. For the vast majority of users, assuming an overclock of 4.3 GHz, the G3258 is the best value processor on the market by miles. On the other hand, users that encode multi-media or run SLI/Crossfire setups should look elsewhere.

 

[Barty1884]

The G3258's Achilles heel is its poor multi-core performance which is over 50% weaker than the group leaders.

😂 oh UserBenchmark. Honestly, a terrible 'benchmark'.

You have the consider it in context.

#1. When the CPU launched, it's Dual-Core nature was already 'behind' something like a Quad Core i5-4690K, let alone a Quad + HT i7-4790K. That didn't make it 'bad' CPU or a bad value, just objectively worse

#2. You're being compared against the "group leaders" in 2020. ~6 years after the G3258 launched, and it was somewhat limited back then. CPUs now commonly have a minimum of 4Cores+HT, 6Cores or greater (with or without HT/SMT) are always going to make the G3258 objectively worse.

 

[Titanion]

But it will greatly outperform the Q6600 at 3.6 with its 4 cores, I have to assume. Is this true even for multi-tasking?