Which would you mess with, and why?

[Onus]

Two interesting new CPU developments have come out recently, AMD's low-power Kabini, which seems very capable of a lot of things on extremely little power, and Intel's unlocked Pentium G3258, which reviews suggest might be a very competent chip itself, punching well above its weight. If you were going to pick one for benchmarking and/or other experiments, which one would you choose, and why?

 

[Obnoxious]

Personally I'd go with Intel, however just ensure that the H81 motherboard can overclock at all. I'd recommend Z87 or Z97 for overclocking, and wouldn't go with H81. Usually they only enable Turbo Boost by a few clicks, and consider it overclocking.

However I have seen certain non-Z chipsets genuinely overclock CPUs, and different board manufacturers and models vary with the OC feature. For example a H81 motherboard which can overclock does not imply that other H81 motherboards can overclock, even if it's from the same manufacturer.

Again I'd go with Intel.

All the best.

 

[Rakeen70210]

I would go with Intel here easily. For $16 extra the performance is completely worth it. Even though it has 4 cores, the Intel still beats the AMD overall. I mean, if you want a budget system that is good enough then go with the G3220 and it will give you the best single core performance for such a low price. Like no one is gonna play something like Watchdogs on ultra with these CPU's probably right? All people will do is run games or applications that at most use 2 cores. So in that sense Pentium over the AMD. The only thing this AMD has going for it is the insanely low power usage and the better integrated graphics over the Pentium, but if you wanna play something like WoW with these CPU's the integrated would be terrible. I wouldnt give this AMD to my dad even though all he does is browse the web and play videos, and use Word and Excel.

Edit: Ok non-performance wise still Pentium because of the fact that we have seen benchmarks in which it matches the i3 and in some cases the i5. If I could mess with it as much as I wanted i would try to shoot up high at 5ghz and run the most CPU intensive game with it. If an x4 750K cant beat this Pentium overclocked the 5350 would die.

 

[stickg1]

I think the last time a board manufacturer put overclocking on a non Z chipset they got in trouble for it. Unless the new Pentium is to be overclocked by base clock, the cost of a competent motherboard (Z97E-ITX for example) would be greater than the Kabini combo making it, IMO, in a completely different price/performance bracket.

 

[Onus]

For performance, the Pentium would certain win; the question isn't which one would outperform the other, but which one would be more fun and/or more enlightening? Whether for someone as (or more) interested in playing with a PC as on a PC, which would have more tweakable options, or be more challenging to dredge the best possible performance out of it?
From a business perspective, is a Kabini a cheap but actually usable processor for multiple office-type applications, plus networking and security layers, or would it bog down so much as to create howling frustration?

 

[logainofhades]

I think the last time a board manufacturer put overclocking on a non Z chipset they got in trouble for it. Unless the new Pentium is to be overclocked by base clock, the cost of a competent motherboard (Z97E-ITX for example) would be greater than the Kabini combo making it, IMO, in a completely different price/performance bracket.

Asrock has added it to at least two of their boards. H81M-DGS R2.0 and the H97 pro4 manuals claim to have this. For playing around, I would probably want the Pentium/H81 combo. Kabini only interests me for an HTPC.

 

[Obnoxious]

The Athlon 5350 would be more than adequate for office applications, it's not a low-end processor by any means. My father still utilises his laptop with a Core 2 Duo for office work, and to be honest since it has a SSD it performs better than my current setup (my setup is by no means high-end, it was actually a budget build.) Even without the SSD, even weaker processors than the Core 2 Duo (T9300) are satisfactory for office work; I used a Pentium 4 throughout high school and college (2005-2012) for office work daily. It was NOT a socket 775 P4 either, it was on 478 with a small regular HDD.

The Athlon 5350 in my opinion would still be decent at running games at medium graphical setting, depending on your discrete GPU. For the performance and price of the Athlon 5350, it's a decent worthwhile processor. However for $15 more (not including motherboard or other component costs), the Pentium is a better investment.

Whether you are deciding on purchasing the Intel or AMD, I'd consider if you're going to be installing a dedicated GPU or not. If not, then the Athlon does provide a better graphical performance.

Regardless, I think that you may receive more "fun" from the Intel Pentium; of course that is subjective and is down to opinion. You may prefer the Athlon, whereas I may prefer the Pentium or vice versa. I agree with Rakeen however, try overclocking your Pentium as much as you can to get a decent kick out of it; go the extra mile and even try for 5GHz. Tied with a GPU, see if you can load more recent games at medium-high graphical setting. Of course for more "fun" you could look into water cooling rather than air/prebundled watercoolers.

You're fine with the H81 motherboard, as I'm sure you're aware of what you're doing, however I would completely recommend a Z87/97 motherboard if you don't already have a motherboard.

All the best.

 

[jaguarskx]

For benchmarking purposes Intel Pentium is the way to go. Kabini does not really hold up well against the Pentium because Kabini uses 4 Jaguar cores. Jaguar's main competitor is Intel's Atom CPU.

On it's own Kabini is likely pretty good for non-demanding tasks since AMD never planned for Kabini to go up against Intel's Pentium CPUs. The primary goal is good performance per watt and that what Kabini seems to do a competent job.

Benchmarks is all about performance and if that is the goal, then Kabini is not the correct choice.

 

[RussK1]

I think the last time a board manufacturer put overclocking on a non Z chipset they got in trouble for it. Unless the new Pentium is to be overclocked by base clock, the cost of a competent motherboard (Z97E-ITX for example) would be greater than the Kabini combo making it, IMO, in a completely different price/performance bracket.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/asus-overclocking-h87-h97-b85,27076.html

 

[4Ryan6]

Intel!

 

[RobCrezz]

Yeah go for the Pentium. Im really interested on what crazy overclocks this will achieve. Should get some high clock speeds with its lower power consumption and heat output.

 

[RussK1]

Intel!

Intel!

 

[Onus]

Thanks to some unexpected generosity from my father-in-law, having nothing to do with computers, I am optimistic that I will actually get to play with both. This is great, because while I agree that the Intel chip probably has a lot more tweaking that can be done on it (making it the more "fun"), one context in which these may actually be used is an extremely low-power (possibly solar) environment, and the key uses would be office applications (gaming would just be a [welcome] bonus), in which testing the low-power AMD chip would be more "useful."

 

[ewok93]

An AM1 would certainly be more fun, simply because it's different. It requires so little power that you can do a lot with it. You could make a PC as small as you possibly could, or get an expensive cooler and see how much you can overclock it, it's just more interesting in general.

 

[Onus]

I haven't read too much about overclocking on AM1. This leads me to believe that the Pentium may be more "fun," but the Kabini remains more "useful."
I need to make room by selling or donating a couple of systems (hopefully this weekend), then I'm going to order at least one if not both of these.

 

[ewok93]

The Kabini may not be great for overclocking, but I think it would be fun to put a really nice cooler on it and see what its absolute maximum is. Of course that would be fun on anything, but something about a phase change cooler on a very low power CPU just sounds awesome. This is assuming you don't keep the phase change cooler on the AM1, because that would be a huge waste of a lot of money.

 

[pauldh]

Fun topic Onus. I'm jumping in late here, but the Pentium is a must have tinkering chip for me.