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Overclocking Pentium G3258 And Athlon X4 750K

Intel Pentium G3258 CPU Review: Haswell, Unlocked, For £55
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In the past, I could have given you a play-by-play of how a low-cost processor comparison would go, without even touching hardware. The stock AMD CPU would have likely been beaten by Intel’s more efficient architecture, but then we would have overclocked to see AMD step into a more commanding position. Now, with both processors tunable, it’s anyone’s game.

Overclocking Athlon X4 750K

Let’s start with a known quantity. The Athlon X4 750K starts life as a Trinity APU, manufactured on a 32 nm process. Its CPU complex is Piledriver-based. To that end, it features a pair of modules, each with two integer units and a shared floating-point unit. AMD calls this four cores. The company then disables the graphics component of the APU, yielding a pure host processor with no Radeon engine to consume thermal headroom. And yet, the Athlon retains a 100 W TDP rating.

By default, the 750K sports a 3.4 GHz base clock and a 4 GHz maximum Turbo Core frequency. There’s a 3.7 GHz boost state in between, too.

Using MSI’s FM2-A85XA-G65 motherboard, we were able to increase voltage to 1.5 V and get all four cores running at 4.5 GHz through much of our benchmark suite (with a 2.2 GHz northbridge). Unfortunately, random crashes nudged us down to 4.4 and then to 4.3 GHz for total stability in Prime95. Temperature wasn’t the problem. AMD’s OverDrive software reported more than 25 degrees of margin throughout. And we simply didn’t want to push any higher on the voltage.

After slowing to 4.3 GHz, we were able to pull back to 1.425 V for a more comfortable long-term setup.

Overclocking Pentium G3258

With no precedent established, we borrow principles from our Haswell-based K-series CPUs for tuning the Pentium G3258 on MSI’s Z97 Gaming 7 motherboard. An unlocked multiplier makes it easy to test the chip’s upper bound. Given a fairly aggressive voltage on the Athlon X4, we went ahead and used 1.3 V to get Intel’s contender running at 4.7 GHz with both cores taxed and 4.8 GHz in single-threaded workloads. Despite temperatures in the mid-60 °C range, though, that proved unstable through our entire suite.

Eventually, we settled on 4.5 GHz with two active cores and a maximum Turbo Boost setting of 4.6 GHz for unflagging stability under Prime95. That sounds fairly modest for something like a Core i7-4770K. But remember this is a 3.2 GHz CPU overclocked more than 40%.

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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.