Intel Pentium G3258 Dual Core Processor Gaming Performance
Intel Pentium G3258 Anniversary Edition Dual Core Processor
Earlier this week Nate & I were able to get our hands on the Intel Pentium G3258 20th Anniversary Edition Processor to take for a ride. While he was doing this, he focused most of his time on the X86 performance of the 3.2GHz Dual Core processor. He did touch a little bit on the graphics performance of the Intel HD graphics on the G3258 as well as pairing the processor with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 TI for a run through of Metro Last Light. I wanted to take the $72.99 dual core Intel Pentium G3258 processor for a spin and focus on gaming performance with a solid discrete graphics card and see how it would stack up against the same system with an Intel Core i7-4770K processor which retails for considerably more.
Instead of the using the latest and greatest graphics card on the market, I’m going to stick my hand into the stack of cards that are getting a little long in the tooth and may be something that has been upgraded in a primary rig that would be great in a dedicated LAN box or a Steam Box. I pulled out the ASUS Direct CU II GeForce GTX 670 graphics card to use today. It’s not the latest and greatest card out there, but it certainly has plenty of performance to build a great rig with still and is very affordable.
Since we have already covered the Intel Pentium G3258 in detail here, we aren’t going to dwell on it to much today. For a quick refresher though, you can find the specifications for the Intel Pentium G3258 anniversary edition below.
| Intel Pentium G3258 Specifications | ||
| Processor Number | G3258 | |
| # of Cores | 2 | |
| # of Threads | 2 | |
| Clock Speed | 3.2 GHz | |
| Cache | 3 MB | |
| DMI2 | 5 GT/s | |
| # of QPI Links | 0 | |
| Instruction Set | 64-bit | |
| Instruction Set Extensions | SSE4.1/4.2 | |
| Embedded Options Available | No | |
| Lithography | 22 nm | |
| Scalability | 1S Only | |
| Max TDP | 53 W | |
| Thermal Solution Specification | PCG 2013C | |
| Recommended Customer Price | BOX : $72.00 TRAY: $72.00 |
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Memory Specifications
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| Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) | 32 GB | |
| Memory Types | DDR3-1333 | |
| # of Memory Channels | 2 | |
| Max Memory Bandwidth | 21.3 GB/s | |
| ECC Memory Supported | Yes | |
| Graphics Specifications | ||
| Processor Graphics | Intel HD Graphics | |
| Graphics Base Frequency | 350 MHz | |
| Graphics Max Dynamic Frequency | 1.1 GHz | |
| Graphics Video Max Memory | 1.7 GB | |
| Intel Quick Sync Video | Yes | |
| Intel Clear Video HD Technology | No | |
| # of Displays Supported | 3 | |
If the Pentium name holds true, the Pentium G3258 should be a great little processor to play with. Nate was impressed by his retail sample, I was previously impressed by the Pentium G3220 so I have my hopes high for the G3258. Let’s take a quick look at the test system that I will be using on the next page and then we can get into the good stuff, the benchmarks!