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Intel Pentium G3258 CPU Review: Haswell, Unlocked, For £55

Intel Pentium G3258 CPU Review: Haswell, Unlocked, For £55
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It's a momentous occasion. Intel now offers an affordable dual-core Pentium with an unlocked multiplier based on its Haswell architecture. How well does it overclock? Can it beat AMD's potent little Athlon X4 750K? We run both through our benchmark suite.

Up until now, every debate we’ve moderated between enthusiasts looking for CPUs on a budget involved an overclockable AMD processor and one of Intel’s multiplier-locked (but more efficient) models. Typically, they’re Core i3s, though if it's important to duck in £75, you're looking at a Pentium, tops.

Intel’s stiff upper lip benefits AMD greatly. Despite higher power consumption and lower performance in a number of workloads, continued support of the enthusiast community earns AMD plenty of cachet. Meanwhile, if you want to overclock an Intel processor, your cheapest option is the £190 Core i5-3570K.

For years now, I’ve told the powers that be inside Intel they need an unlocked CPU for the folks who grew up tuning Pentiums and Celeron 300As. Surely, such an offering would make our value comparisons much more interesting.

I was more than just a little excited, then, when I learned that Intel did, in fact, plan to introduce a low-cost, multiplier-unlocked processor for enthusiasts to tool around with. And I have to imagine AMD was mortified.

The Pentium G3258: An Enthusiast Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing

Claiming to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its Pentium brand (which was technically last year), Intel is rolling out a Pentium G3258 based on its Haswell architecture. Operating at a fixed 3.2 GHz, the G3258 falls right into the middle of Intel’s current desktop Pentium family that ranges from 3.0 to 3.4 GHz. None of the Pentiums support Turbo Boost technology, none of them offer Hyper-Threading support, and all of them, including the G3258, sport two physical execution cores.

Of course, each core is complemented by 256 KB of L2 cache. There’s also a 3 MB shared L3 cache between them. Intel integrates its HD Graphics block with 10 execution units, specifying the engine to run between 350 and 1100 MHz—same as the other Pentium models. And like the rest of the family, officially, Pentium G3258 has a 53 W TDP.

If you didn’t know any better, the 20th anniversary Pentium blends right in with its stable mates. But it boasts that unlocked multiplier, which means unencumbered overclocking using the only practical knob available for tuning Intel processors. We just saw the Core i7-4790K hit 4.7 GHz in single-threaded workloads (Core i7-4790K Review: Devil's Canyon Tantalizes Enthusiasts). In theory, that should create quite a bit of headroom for a 3.2 GHz CPU to scale up. Then again, it’s just as possible these dual-core dies aren’t flexible. There is no precedent for this; we’re literally looking at Intel’s first unlocked Haswell-based chip with two cores.

Quick Sync technology is also enabled, accelerating H.264, VC-1, and MPEG-2 decoding, along with H.264 encode in properly-optimized applications. This might seem like a relatively minor addition to the Pentium family. But take a look at this page of my Core i7-4770K review. If you watch a lot of multimedia content, capture video, or transcode from one format into another for your mobile devices, Intel’s application of fixed-function resources is quickly going to become a good friend.

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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.