g3258 for htpc upgrade?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

A good article from Eurogamer(people who actually run and play games for a living) about the G3258:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-pentium-g3258-review

No doubt the G3258 is a strong CPU for certain games when paired with the right graphics card,but don't knock the Core i3s!!

However, Crysis 3 - and to a lesser extent Battlefield 4 - demonstrate that the most advanced gaming engines cause problems that can't be fully resolved by sheer clock-speed alone. The future of games development is many-core in nature and we wonder whether a little more investment in a better CPU in the here and now could end up being the better option overall in the medium to long term.

While we had good success in overclocking on the supplied heatsink and fan, you may end up with a chip that requires an aftermarket cooler to get decent clocks - and that additional expense could take you into FX-6300 or Core i3 price territory: two processors perhaps better equipped for the many-core era and potentially better suited for a budget gaming PC. On the flipside, at least the upgrade path available for a PC built on this platform is sizeable: not only can you run this year's Core i5s and i7s, but in theory you should be able to run next year's too.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

does the i3 2130 have hyperthreading?

I think you'll be ok regarding temps if at stock clocks

It does.

My 2120? It does if that's what you mean

It means you can get an SB or IB Core i5!

I think that with an HD7850 would be well balanced and a better choice than changing over to a G3258.