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Results: Synthetics

Intel Pentium G3258 CPU Review: Haswell, Unlocked, For £55
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With that small library of games benchmarked, I’m not sure there’s much more we could learn from a synthetic. However, there actually is some useful information to digest.

First, let’s look at the Graphics score. Typically, you’d expect this to be even from top to bottom, as Futuremark effectively shifts as much processing to the GPU as possible. And yet, while the Core i5, i3, and overclocked Pentium demonstrate fairly similar scores, the Athlon is a bit slower, and the stock Pentium G3258 downright hobbles a GeForce GTX Titan. Don’t be bothered by this; nobody’s going to pair a £55 CPU and £900 graphics card. Still, even in a synthetic, it’s impossible to overcome that gross imbalance.

Shift focus over to the Physics suite, intended to isolate CPU performance. Futuremark reflects the superiority of four physical cores in a threading-optimized game by giving Intel’s Core i5 a big advantage. The Core i3 is a dual-core chip; however, it employs Hyper-Threading to schedule four threads, and so it claims a second-place finish. AMD employs a dual-module design with four integer units and a lot of shared resources. At a stock 3.4 GHz, it finishes second-to-last. But overclocking to 4.3 GHz yields third place. The dual-core, no-frills Pentium gets hammered in stock form, and picks up a spot once it’s overclocked.

The overall score blends the outcomes. Except for the Core i5 and i3, those red bars don’t really do a good job forecasting real-world performance. However, we like to think of synthetics as better gauges of a future where everything is maximally optimized, and that’d take more emphasis on multi-core CPUs in games.

We enter the realm of performance on the desktop outside of gaming with a PCMark chart. The Core i3 is missing because it repeatedly failed this benchmark.

Stock, Intel’s Pentium G3258 roughly ties the overclocked Athlon, while tuning takes the Pentium up several notches. It remains to be seen if these numbers translate over to our benchmark suite.

The Fritz chess benchmark puts a pointed emphasis on threading, specifically reflecting the integer performance of these CPUs. As a result, Intel’s Haswell-based Core i5-4690K dominates. It’s followed by AMD’s overclocked Athlon X4 750K, which puts its four integer units to good use. The Core i3 places third. Although it only wields two cores, Hyper-Threading helps keep them fully utilized—so much so, in fact, that a dual-core Pentium G3258 overclocked to 4.5 GHz can’t quite keep up.

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  • 0 Hide
    tea urchin , 17 June 2014 08:14
    Been waiting reviews for a 'sister' build. Thanks.
  • -1 Hide
    Plusthinking Iq , 17 June 2014 12:10
    this beat every amd up to amd 8350, and still you need to oc the 8350 to get better fps in some games. this pretty much leaves amd dead in the water in gaming cpu's
  • 4 Hide
    Blahman11 , 17 June 2014 13:21
    This is a very good CPU for the price, AMD should be worried, and in fact everyone should. This CPU is pretty much removing for AMD one of their last areas in which AMD did well- cheap overclockable CPUs. AMD need to respond to this, perhaps make a GPU disabled kaveri chip that overclocks better than the 7850k does? If AMD don't respond then we lose the last competitor to intel, and everyone knows what that would mean for the market.
  • 3 Hide
    jaslion , 17 June 2014 19:30
    well here in belgium and fx 6300 is 100€ straight and this pentium 75€ so i would go for the fx 6300 personnally
  • 3 Hide
    ivyanev , 19 June 2014 09:30
    correct me if i am wrong but overclocking this processor requires z motherboard, and a pontent cooler. These two combined will add up to more than the difference with the i3. What you end up is hot, overclocked processor that is inferior in almost all benchmarks for no less money. The only logic I can see is to buy this now and after a couple of years upgrade to i7 and overclock it also.
  • -5 Hide
    Plusthinking Iq , 19 June 2014 10:10
    stock cooler should not be used anyways, so your wrong ivyanev.
    dont buy a pc so cheap you cant cool it or have a good motherboard.
  • -2 Hide
    Defconluke , 22 June 2014 09:19
    Minimum of £80 for a low end Z97 motherboard + £55 for the unlocked Pentium with an overclock that is not guaranteed.

    When the i3 is £90 and can be put in a cheap (£40) H81 motherboard without needing the effort of finding a stable overclock it seems a bit risky to go for the Pentium.

    However, if a later upgrade to an i5K or i7K is planned (or you need the Z series chipset features) then the Pentium is a good way to start saving towards that upgrade while not compromising on the expense of an i3 or drop in performance of a regular Pentium.
  • 2 Hide
    d1vine , 29 June 2014 10:05
    You dont need an Z series to OC this monster.You need just an "solid" Asus h81/b85/h97 mobo(with al least one heatshrink on the VRM).Asus announced that they will unlock overclocking on their h81/b85/h97 mobos.Plus you don't need a serious cooler,
    Zalman CNPS10X Performa(~35$) or
    Thermalright True Spirit 120i(~45$) should be enough to keep it under 80 degrees.

    SOURCE:http://www.tomshardware.com/news/asus-overclocking-h87-h97-b85,27076.html
  • 1 Hide
    TesseractOrion , 8 July 2014 17:10
    Is there a slight anomaly in the Tomb Raider graphs? The OC G3258 appears a lot slower than the normal one...
  • 0 Hide
    Pegasu5 , 16 July 2014 14:54
    4.6Ghz on a H81M-Plus here: http://www.ukgamingcomputers.co.uk/overclocking-pentium-g3258-on-h81-b75-h87-h97-chipsets-a-60.html
  • 0 Hide
    jukkie , 20 July 2014 04:35
    Well, I have my G3258 running at 4.3Ghz at 1.33v on a £30 MSI H81 mobo, coupled with a £15 Freezer 7 pro heatsink/fan. That's only £85 in total for quite a fair amount of performance.

    Anything above 4.3Ghz wasn't stable, even with the voltage up to 1.34v (not prepared to try higher than that as temps were too high). This was likely down to the cheap mobo, but I'm not going to complain about that, as it's still a nice overclock for the money.