I am cognizant that this is a topic that is rehearsed over and over again, but I posses both CPUs and I would like some assistance with determining which is truly better for myself in the future and at this current moment. Thank you for your time.
The 860K is better at both gaming and multitasking because of its two extra cores.
If you want something to work right NOW for gaming then grab the Athlon. there are some games that wont start unless you have a quad-core CPU sadly.
BUT if you are planning on upgrading later on then definitely grab the Pentium. simply because lets say you get the Pentium and get a z97 board. you can throw in the 4690k later in the future and you'll be set for a few years.
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Athlon because it has 2 extra cores, and without those cores some games won't ever run period. Plus you can overclock that little Athlon and make it pretty respectable in core performance.
What Kat said.
I am grateful for the help that has been given, although I do have an inquiry, if I am torn between my needs and wants out of a CPU, which is the overall best CPU for a grand PC experience?
That depends on what experience you want
balls out overclock
gaming
content creation
I mean my 8320 is pretty "grand" considering it does everything I tell to but its a dying socket with no future. Perhaps 4690k with a strong overclock.
The Athlon will probably give you the most enjoyable PC experience, whatever the hell that means. The G3258 is in no way a bad chip, it just requires tweaking and extra work to make it a good one. Gaming performance and other stuff suffer on it until you get a decent and stable overclock, at 3.2 GHz it can play a lot of games, but 60 FPS isn't that stable, but at 4.0 and higher, things get more stable.
I did a thing here on the G3258: https://forum.teksyndicate.com/t/new-build-based-on-the-pentium-g3258-that-fits-in-a-backpack/84031/17
I have not done any content creation benchmarks aside from encoding and exporting edited images. I have not rendered any videos from Adobe PP yet.
Perhaps, for the most enjoyable gaming experience, the Athlon seems to be the best fit. Am I correct?
yes. but the problem is, is that AMD is dying. if you want to get down to it. we can't even be sure AMD will be here next year. the Pentium is good for a "i need something now, i'll get a better CPU later" type of situation. which i would really push you grab the pentium and upgrade the CPU later down the road. the 4690k will be an excellent chip for the next 3 or four years. the Athlon won't be.
That would depend on the game, and if you want to OC or not. Newer AAAAAA+++ games will probably do fine on the 860K (many support multi-threading now, like GTAV and BF4), but older games or badly made games might do better on the G3258 (things like TERA and maybe Planetside 2).
There is not a defined answer, it depends on what you do and what you plan on doing.
There are?
Far Cry 4 is the big one i can name of the top of my head.
Oh, probably the games that I just ignored. Hah.
yeah. it still counts though. sadly a lot of the triple A titles blocked dual-cores.
Hopefully by the time I care for those games that do that I'll have upgraded or updated my rig, if I recall correctly GTAV doesn't care, so that's good enough for me.
I believe I will go with the Pentium due to its nature of overclocking and its upgrade path. I do find tinkering with my system to be a pleasant activity. Thank you once again for your time and input.
No Problem. Enjoy your system :)
In GTA 5, you can get frequent drops to 25 FPS using a pentium.
I would either get the 860k or an i3, but not a pentium. An i3 is about $35-$40 more expensive if you can afford that, and it's faster than any other CPU in a similar price range.
But then again it all comes down what games you wanna play. Pentium can handle MOST games fine.