The Pentium G3258, at 3.2 GHz, is a fairly slow CPU. Two cores, 3 MB of shared L3 cache, no Hyper-Threading—those specifications are indeed Pentium-class. But it’s the unlocked clock multiplier that makes Intel’s 20th anniversary Pentium something special.
And let’s face it: nobody’s going to buy the G3258 and leave it at 3.2 GHz. Enthusiasts are going to take it and crank it up beyond 4 GHz.
Before now, it was hard to go wrong with AMD’s Athlon X4 750K. Devotees of Don’s Best Gaming CPUs For The Money column know that’s where his recommendations begin. But you can almost scratch everything under the £170 mark by tuning this processor up to 4.5 GHz.
The Pentium isn’t perfect. Threaded workloads are going to punish its two cores. I find myself wishing this was a K-series Core i3 instead, if only for the addition of Hyper-Threading. But then it’d also probably sell for quite a bit more, at least. Down at £55, Intel is clearly gunning for that unlocked Athlon X4, which sells for just a bit more higher. It’s only unfortunate that you’ll want to pair the Pentium with a Z97- or Z87-based motherboard for overclocking. Right there, you’re looking at £10 or £20 premium over nice A88X-based platforms.
Although the Pentium gets kicked around in a few of our benchmarks, it does beat the Athlon in every game we test—sometimes by a lot. As a value-oriented gaming processor, this thing is just awesome. I’d love to see what Paul Henningsen could do with it in our System Builder Marathon, where he'd pick a more suitable graphics complement than the Titan I used to alleviate graphics bottlenecks. Powering a quiet, lightly-tuned home theater PC, it’d be right as rain. And although I wouldn’t want to rely on the G3258’s on-die HD Graphics engine, the chip’s Quick Sync technology is a real boon if you’re watching or converting video content.

For as long as Intel insisted on making enthusiasts pay a premium for K-series Core i5 and i7s, AMD had the market cornered on budget-friendly overclocking. The Pentium G3258 is a watershed moment for the company, though. It’s giving power users access to a powerful and efficient architecture, along with the freedom to tweak it, all at an inclusionary price point. The Pentium G3258 typifies what our Tom’s Hardware Smart Buy award is all about.
- An Enthusiast-Oriented Pentium CPU?
- Overclocking Pentium G3258 And Athlon X4 750K
- How We Tested Intel’s Pentium G3258 And AMD’s Athlon X4 750K
- Results: Arma 3
- Results: Battlefield 4
- Results: Grid 2
- Results: Metro: Last Light
- Results: Thief
- Results: Tomb Raider
- Results: World of Warcraft
- Results: Synthetics
- Results: Content Creation
- Results: Adobe CC
- Results: Productivity And Media Encoding
- Results: Compression Apps
- Power Consumption And Efficiency
- Haswell, Unlocked, For £55
dont buy a pc so cheap you cant cool it or have a good motherboard.
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.
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
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.