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Pentium G3258 (Anniversary) review.

ALXAndy

ALXAndy

ALXAndy

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Yay, so I'm breaking my duck for this year and this is the first review (with data) that I've done in an absolute age.

Today's review concentrates on the Intel Pentium G3258, also known as the 20th Anniversary CPU. I have built a completely mismatched PC using parts I had lying around for months. The spec of the test system are as follows (the parts that matter).

Intel Pentium G3258 overclocked to 4.2ghz turbo @ 1.197v (max the board allows)
4gb Geil Extreme ram running @ 1333mhz
Gigabyte B85N "Phoenix" ITX motherboard (max 1.2v)
MSI Nvidia GTX Titan Black stock clocks

So what is the aim of this review?

Well, I will be honest I love testing things. Reviews of the Pentium were pretty plentiful at launch but sadly it was benched and tested as a entry level CPU and thus was not tested with high end graphical hardware. This is a shame, because there may be a point where the CPU can be bottlenecked by the graphics hardware. For example, running something like a Radeon 270 with this CPU could cause a situation where you are GPU limited and thus the CPU is made to look bad.

So the aim here was to eliminate any graphical bottle necking at 1080p resolution and find out exactly what the processor itself is capable of.

The CPU

Intel decided a while back to finally release a budget CPU that could be overclocked. They did this to coincide with the 20th anniversary of their first Pentium CPU. Here it is here, retail package.



And Intel's data sheet.



This CPU can easily be overclocked. What makes this CPU an even more tempting proposition is that certain board partners have released cheap low end motherboards with the overclocking options left active. This means it's not very difficult to grab a board that will overclock and the CPU for a very low price.

The games and testing methodology

Please note I have chosen games from multiple genres in order to help those out who may be considering buying one of these CPUs. As thus I have chosen a certain type of game and consider those the bigger, leading type of their class (so for example racing games, first person shooters and so on).

Each game has been set to run at the absolute maximum settings the games will allow. I decided to use 2XMSAA when possible due to the amount of system ram, as upping the MSAA can cause the GPU to lean on the system memory.

The benchmarks

OK let's get to the good part.

First up Dirt 3 - Note - Max FPS is not recorded.



At first I had to rub my eyes and look again. Got to admit, was very shocked by the result. Obviously Dirt 3 is not CPU bound and doesn't really care how many cores you have. Moving on..

Grid 2



And again I was pretty surprised at how well the Pentium performed. Time for some first person fun.

Sleeping Dogs.



Not my sort of game and to be honest I only played it for about an hour before I stopped playing. But again we see that the Pentium is not really stopping the system from achieving perfectly playable FPS.

Hitman Absolution



Again not one of my favourite games but it is quite hard to get running at maximum settings but once again was absolutely no problem at all for the Pentium.

Metro 2033



Note - this benchmark will always come back with a very low FPS score no matter how good your rig is. What's important here is the average FPS and 64 is again more than playable. In fact it's actually better than just more than playable it's quite amazing. It may be an older title but that doesn't matter, it's still a pig to run.

Crysis 3



And I will admit the first jaw dropping moment of the day. I just couldn't believe that the Pentium was able to keep the minimum FPS playable. This is a test that I tried, and failed, using both an I5 2400 at stock speed and a AMD FX 8320 at stock speed. The AMD needed serious overclocking to get into the 40s. However once again the average FPS is truly remarkable and again, more than playable. Stunning !

GTAV



Please note ! I had to enable VSYNC because the game was stuttering quite badly with it disabled. One would think that with it enabled a average FPS count would be hard to maintain, but once again the Pentium truly left me flabbergasted. I really could not believe how well the game ran on such an entry level CPU.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R - Call of Pripyat



World of Tanks



Conclusion

A couple, nay, few years ago I decided to have some fun with a Celeron G530 and a GTX 480. At that time the GTX 480 was still a high end card and I wanted to see what it could do with the cheapest processor available from Intel. Those results left me quite shocked, with the rig only really failing in Mafia 2 which seems to be heavily CPU bound.

I repeated that test this time around and to be honest the game was pretty much unplayable with the Pentium, even with it overclocked. I would imagine it had something to do with Physx which I did set to maximum. However, every other result from the Pentium has absolutely amazed me.

I did read in reviews that in certain games the Pentium could be an issue. However, using many of the latest games I saw no issues at all. It wouldn't surprise me if the minimum FPS counts could actually be improved by running 8gb of ram, but I really wanted to keep the rest of the rig as cheap and low rent as possible.
 
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It is interesting to see how this little chip performs when used with high end graphics :) I'm guessing you ran these tests with only the game and monitoring programs open? As I found that using a dual core cpu with 4gb ram and running bf3 with team speak made my computer run rather slowly until I got my old 3570k and 8gb, tbh it was possibly the rams fault, but it is interesting to me at least.

Nice review, would love to see how this performs in more sim orientated games like arms 3
 
pastymuncher said:
Andy's converted and gone over to the dark side!! :D:p:D
Click to expand...

I own a 3970x too dude :D

I must say that I've found the Pentium to be pretty amazing though. Some one on another forum asked me to install and bench STALKER COP claiming it should make the CPU cry but I saw a min of 38 FPS when running through the tall grass and an average of 58 FPS with VSYNC locked on. Sadly I couldn't get it to disable but with an average of 58 I'm pretty sure the max would have been very high.

So far,and as much as I try to trip it up I have only seen poor results from Mafia II and that was with Physx on maximum.

I've no doubt the major benefactor here is the Titan Black but the CPU has performed amazingly well.

I do get the odd stutter here and there but I lay the blame for that on 4gb ram tbh.
 
Why are people saying the textures cant even load in on gta v on this chip ? I'll try it later on my G3258 which is at 4.5 ghz
 
C64 said:
People have said GTA V is unplayable on it ?
Click to expand...

People just have different meanings/opinions of the word 'playable'.

For me, 20-30FPS when the action gets going (heists, other online missions with loads of action going on) is unplayable. It's doing those moments, when you have loads of other players racing behind you, trying to catchup, shooting you from behind etc, that you need the higher minimum fps.

Many of the reputable review websites that did benchmarks of GTA5 on many different CPU's, reported that the G3258 slowed down to 5-20 fps during demanding scenes.

Some would deem that 'playable', and that's fine for them, though I don't see many recommending a G3258 for GTA5 around here.

If all you do is play single player, drive around in a car on your own etc, put some old grandpa song on the radio, then the G3258 can manage 30-50fps depending on your GPU. Try doing any of the missions involving a few vehicles in a high speed chase/gunfight, and the fps will crawl.
 
C64 said:
Why are people saying the textures cant even load in on gta v on this chip ? I'll try it later on my G3258 which is at 4.5 ghz
Click to expand...

It'll be fine. There's a video on Youtube of a guy who running a Pentium and a 750ti and it chugs along nicely at around 40 FPS with lower settings.

Dave. I normally ignore your posts because they're usually drivel but since when was an average of 56 FPS at absolute max settings unplayable?

Just face it chap, you got it wrong. I'm no fan of Intel but the facts are the facts.
 
Try actually playing the game, rather than benching a 90 second snippet.
Might not suit your agenda, because you currently own this (that goes against the ALX way, what's to only big up items you own)
 
got a pentium K in my daughters rig running gta on a clocked 280x quite happily.

doesn't seem to drop below 30 playing through a 32" tv it looks cracking
 
Dave2150 said:
If all you do is play single player, drive around in a car on your own etc, put some old grandpa song on the radio, then the G3258 can manage 30-50fps depending on your GPU. Try doing any of the missions involving a few vehicles in a high speed chase/gunfight, and the fps will crawl.
Click to expand...

It would do me then!

Nice work Andy, could you try World of Tanks? it's free but it's obviously hassle. Whenever I've seen someone complain about performance in WoT they usually have a low rent CPU, that game seems fairly CPU dependant.

Cheers.
 
ALXAndy said:
It'll be fine. There's a video on Youtube of a guy who running a Pentium and a 750ti and it chugs along nicely at around 40 FPS with lower settings.

Dave. I normally ignore your posts because they're usually drivel but since when was an average of 56 FPS at absolute max settings unplayable?

Just face it chap, you got it wrong. I'm no fan of Intel but the facts are the facts.
Click to expand...

I've learnt to not take any notice to the various times you've claimed you were putting me on ignore here :p

Yeh I've seen a few videos on youtube, where a g3258 owner was driving around slowly, on his own, producing playable fps. I'm not arguing against that, I'm simply pointing out that you'll get 15-25fps during the hectic parts of the game, such as online missions, heists, or even in singleplayer missions where you get loads of police and other units at fast speed.

By all means, jump into a online game and do a heist, record it with fps showing, slap it on youtube and you can show us how the G3258 can produce a consistent 40-50 fps even in those chaotic missions/online mode.

Again, nice review andy and for the money it's a cracking CPU, though I still wouldn't recommend it for GTA5.
 
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Telecaster said:
It would do me then!

Nice work Andy, could you try World of Tanks? it's free but it's obviously hassle. Whenever I've seen someone complain about performance in WoT they usually have a low rent CPU, that game seems fairly CPU dependant.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

No worries I'll look into it tomorrow.
 
Telecaster said:
It would do me then!

Nice work Andy, could you try World of Tanks? it's free but it's obviously hassle. Whenever I've seen someone complain about performance in WoT they usually have a low rent CPU, that game seems fairly CPU dependant.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

Here you go fella. Max settings with FXAA. There aren't any other options for alias.

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8250, 90000, 64, 118, 91.667

And the actual frames.

FPS
86
85
82
80
78
68
69
67
65
65
65
69
67
69
68
68
68
71
69
69
73
83
89
90
89
90
94
98
100
98
95
87
88
88
90
92
92
91
95
96
96
95
96
99
98
98
99
97
111
112
112
114
111
110
114
114
115
115
114
108
114
116
117
117
115
104
103
106
99
99
100
99
100
100
98
97
96
92
90
86
90
90
93
96
85
78
75
71
71
79

Taken during a battle in which I managed to die three times in ninety seconds lmao. Seems like quite a fun game !

Also added STALKER COP and WOT graphs to the OP, STALKER results, benched with me running away from a dog through the grass :D

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
5299, 90000, 37, 63, 58.878

And actual FPS, noting you can't disable VSYNC for some reason.

FPS
61
60
59
60
60
59
60
61
60
60
60
60
60
60
60
60
60
60
60
60
59
60
60
49
53
60
60
60
60
60
60
60
59
60
60
61
59
60
60
59
60
60
61
60
60
60
60
39
61
59
60
59
52
60
60
59
60
60
60
60
58
60
60
60
59
38
60
59
60
60
60
61
60
60
60
60
41
59
61
60
54
62
59
61
60
59
60
60
60
59
 
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C64 said:
People have said GTA V is unplayable on it ?
Click to expand...

That was probably down to one review with a bias towards AMD to be fair, the reviewer said that they couldn't get it stable and funnily enough never bothered to try to fix it - a rather good way of hiding its performance. ;)
 
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mmj_uk said:
That was probably down to one review with a bias towards AMD to be fair, the reviewer said that they couldn't get it stable and funnily enough never bothered to try to fix it - a rather good way of hiding its performance. ;)
Click to expand...

I posted this before but....


CPU @ 4.4ghz and a 750ti. Now of course if there's going to be any sort of bottle necking from that rig it will more than likely be the 750ti, given the CPU is running at a Devil's Canyon 4.4ghz.

I remember when the game launched people were benchmarking it and saying that the I7 made no difference over the I5. Obviously there's practically no way for me to tell for certain but it would seem the game is more than happy on two threads, providing you have a BFG like GPU.

People seem to be forgetting that this is exactly the same technology in the 4790k. If the game doesn't want cores then you're going to get similar performance.

As I did say though Mafia 2 suffers very badly because of the Pentium. However, that's about the only game I've seen suffer so far.
 
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