Overclockable Pentium Anniversary Edition Review: The Intel Pentium G3258

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• Ian Cutress - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link

  Here is the FX-6350: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1281

• Computer Bottleneck - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link

  Non-Z motherboards capable of 4.5 Ghz with stock cooler start at $60 (and probably go cheaper than that.)
  
  So a Z board for overclocking Pentium G3258 is not necessary.

• shortstuff - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link

  What were the other components used during the test? I thought the test system components would be listed in the article.

• hojnikb - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link

  Is pentium line using the same die as i3 ?
  Also, is intel planning on making more of these unlocked pentiums in the future (broadwell) or was this a one time dela ?

• extide - Tuesday, July 15, 2014 - link

  Yes, they are the same exact dies, pretty much. If Intel did it anything like they did with ivy Bridge, then basically there are 4-6* dies for the consumer Haswell chips. These dies are used in all lines from Celeron, to Pentium and i3/5/7, desktop AND mobile chips.
  
  2c/3MB/GT1
  2c/4MB/GT2
  4c/6MB/GT1
  4c/8MB/GT2
  
  *The R-series CPU's use 1 or 2 additional different dies. I know there is a 4c version, which has 6 or 8MB of L3, and GT3, and there may also be a 2c version as well, but I am not sure.

• extide - Tuesday, July 15, 2014 - link

  EDIT: For chips like the Celerons with 2MB of L3, they disable some of the L3 cache. Sometimes a SKU will use a 'higher'/bigger die than you would expect, with some parts disabled. It just depends on what Intel feels like doing/has more of at the time/etc.

• KAlmquist - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link

  For an allegedly "unlocked version," the G3258 certainly has a lot of stuff locked.
  - Half of the GPU execution units (10 out of 20) are locked.
  - One MB of cache is locked.
  - The AVX instructions are locked.
  - The AES instructions are locked.
  - The transaction instructions (TSX-NI) are locked.
  - I/O virtualization (VT-d) is locked.
  - Hyperthreading is locked.
  I'm sure that there is more stuff that I've missed. I'd guess that Intel has made somewhere around one third of the circuitry on the chip unusable.

• MikeMurphy - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link

  Nobody would be buying the more expensive i5 and i7 k-series CPUs if these weren't sufficiently impaired.
  
  It's a good CPU for someone who was going to buy a Pentium anyways. It shouldn't be changing much in terms of purchasing decisions otherwise.

• OrphanageExplosion - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link

  My guess is that we won't see an overclocked i3 because with 4.5GHz, hyper threading and a bit more cache, suddenly there's little need to buy a non-K i5 any more in a majority of use-case scenarios.

• SolarAxix - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link

  Very good article.
  
  I actually bough a Pentium G3258 along with an MSI Z97 PC Mate for $99 plus tax at Microcenter.
  
  I didn't expect anything magical from this purchase. It was easy to justify since I was getting the processor and the motherboard for less than the sale price of the motherboard which sells for $109.99.
  
  I can see this being a great machine to surf the web and to do some Steam In-Home Streaming. Even OC to 4.5/4.6, it doesn't use much in electricity when it idles plus I got to upgrade my current low-end system with this new system. It has USB 3 and SATA 3 ports and a newer audio codec. Overall for me, it was a no-brainer. If it was more than $100, then I am not sure if I would made the jump or not.
  
  If you are lucky enough to be close to a Microcenter, then this is a great deal for a low-end spare PC to play with.
  ( http://www.microcenter.com/site/brands/G3258Bundle... )