On Black Friday I'm definitely looking to buy this very good budget CPU for my first build ever. My research tells me that to unlock the G3258's full potential I need to overclock it. Overclocking is something that right now I don't feel comfortable doing given my inexperience and lack of funds. So given my current funds I was wondering if I could theoretically prepare for overclocking a couple months down the line? Could you guys suggest to me some 40-55 dollar Motherboards that would allow me to overclock down the road but without breaking the bank right now? Also a YouTube video told me that you're only able to overclock the G3258 on a Z97 board? Is this correct? And finally, in addition to overclocking would SLI be viable option for this CPU or would that be pushing it to its limits?
Motherboard chipsets are a mixed bag using the G3258. You will be able to overclock using any Z97, but you also can on certain B85 motherboards, certain H81 motherboards, certain H97 boards, and certain H87 boards.
As for SLI, there's nothing stopping you, but depending on GPU it might not be worth it. Putting GTX760's in SLI would probably be fine, but if you're planning on doing something like GTX980's in SLI I fear that the G3258 would bottleneck the crap out of the cards.
According to Austin Evans - the Pentium G3258 will be able to overclock up to 4.5 to 4.7 ghz on a budget oriented motherboard like the Asus B85 R 2.0 - costs roughly around $75 - you need to update the bios first to unlock the OC feature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVmIVSalP-s&list=UUXGgrKt94gR6lmN4aN3mYTg
Just be warned that even with an insane OC it isn't a very powerful CPU. Yeah single core performance is decent but overall I'd say you're probably better off with something a bit more powerful.
The g3258 will be a good start and you can always upgrade later. You should no problem getting it up to 4.2ghz on any permitting motherboard. Even over clocked sli really would be a waste as g3258 would struggle. I would consider a R9 285 or EVGA gtx760ssc or ftw. Most decent Asus 1150 motherboards have a bios update now that allows overclocking of the g3258.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2389948
Check this out, it's very useful for non Z boards.
For consistent 60fps I have to use the Low/maybe med preset on battlefield 3, yeah 3, so just bare that in mind like DerKrieger said.
I think that's a one off though, most only go to 4.3 unfortunately.
Do you guys think this is an acceptable CPU for a decent gaming computer? Looking at some of the benchmark results in the video above it seems to handle gaming amazingly well. I was looking at parts for my cousins first build and this CPU seems like such a good buy for the money. I am just worried that it will fall short on certain games or bottleneck the graphics card I would get(GTX 760 range).
Get this amazing bang for the buck, or go with an i5 quad core that I know won't have any issues...what do you guys think?
Personally, i think you would be better served at least an i3 4150 ( which was on sale for 89 dollars) plus a decent gpu. It as hyperthreading and and will not stutter in games as much as the g3258.
i would go 860k if you want to overclock, or i3 if you don't
also he could buy a g3258 now, and then upgrade to i5, i7
Ya, lol.
It won't be as consistent with the fps, so most the time it'll be good, but when the game needs more power suddenly it'll drop majorly.
FX 6300 was down to like $80. I'd watch it. The 8320 is $120, so in my opinion you couldn't go wrong there. I wish they made true 8 core phenoms with updated architectures.
The AMD Athlon 860k is $90 while the G3258 is $70 and they perform the same in most games with the G3258 performing better in games that need better core for core performance. I would not consider the AMD 860k until the price comes down to at least $60-$70. Another factor is the AMD 860k does have many instruction sets like AVX that the G3258 does not. Lastly going with the Intel G3258 leaves you the option to upgrade to an i5 or i7 in the future. The AMD 860k being on the FM2+ socket is a toss up. In 2015-2016 there may be better FM2+ CPUs to upgrade to, there may not. There has been rumors of a 6 core APU and Athlon in the near future for FM2+.
The hyperthreading will have no benefit in gaming and many other daily tasks. There really isn't any games yet that take advantage of hyperthreading and not much software is really optimized to use hyperthreading. The G3258 oc'ed to 3.5Ghz would perform almost the same as a i3 4150.
Its hard to tell if Intel is really better than AMD since Intel cheats by having their compiler favored over AMD or VIA. This explains it http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=49