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Results: Thief, Tomb Raider and WoW

The Pentium G3258 Cheap Overclocking Experiment
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Thief

Even with the detail settings cranked up as high as they’ll go, the CPU you choose does make a difference in Thief at 1920x1080. Both Intel’s Pentium and AMD’s Athlon pick up quantifiable performance after modest air-cooled overclocks. As we’ve seen several times already, though, the dual-core Haswell-based chip shines a bit more brightly.

That advantage is diminished by frame time variance numbers indicating hitches and stutters in several places. This stuff isn’t new, either. In several games, Intel’s Haswell architecture delivers spectacular frame rates by virtue of its efficiency, but also stumbles over certain passages more than the quad-core contenders (notice the Core i5 and Athlon X4 at the top of our chart). Does the same phenomenon apply in Tomb Raider?

Tomb Raider

As with Battlefield 4, Tomb Raider is another title limited by the speed of your graphics card (even when you’re using a $1000 board). Our frame rate over time chart shows just how tightly each platform remains grouped—only the overclocked Athlon and Pentium CPUs (plus the stock Pentium) break away from the field.

When so much of the performance story is told by your GPU, don’t expect a host processor swap to affect frame time variance much, either. The dual-core Pentium doesn’t run into the same issues this time around.

World of WarCraft

But World of Warcraft is an entirely different story; it’s heavily affected by CPU performance. Architectural efficiency and thread count both come into play. As a result, the Hyper-Threaded Core i3 and quad-core Core i5 take top honors, followed by Intel’s stock and overclocked Pentium G3258. AMD’s processors simply don’t do as well, consistent with other WoW-based benchmarks we’ve run over the years.

We might have suspected the dual-core Pentium to get punished in our frame time variance benchmarks. It doesn’t, though. Instead, the Athlon struggles most.

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  • 2 Hide
    Someone Somewhere , July 29, 2014 2:30 AM
    First page (in bold heading):
    Quote:
    Wait, Did You Say B81?

    You mean either H81 or B85, I'm guessing.
  • 0 Hide
    Nuckles_56 , July 29, 2014 2:41 AM
    so 2x4GB=16GB RAM and also 2x4GB=32GB RAM

    Maths fail?
  • 6 Hide
    blackmagnum , July 29, 2014 4:02 AM
    Spoiler: Old girl Athlon gets whipped by jock strap Pentium.
  • 7 Hide
    edlivian , July 29, 2014 4:22 AM
    athlon whimpers into the corner, and pentium flexes its skinny little arms
  • 0 Hide
    LucoTF , July 29, 2014 4:23 AM
    Quote:
    First page (in bold heading):
    Quote:
    Wait, Did You Say B81?

    You mean either H81 or B85, I'm guessing.


    LOL

    they were offered both and settled on the H81
  • 0 Hide
    tomfreak , July 29, 2014 6:30 AM
    U guys should throw in Core 2 quad 9550/9650 and bench together or even the Nehelem quad core to compare.
  • 0 Hide
    cangelini , July 29, 2014 7:03 AM
    @ Nuckles_56: the modules we used came from one standardized kit. Because the H81 and A78 platforms only offer two slots, we pulled two modules from the kit. The other boards gave us four slots, so we used four modules from the same kit. On an X79- based board, you'd see all eight in play.
  • 4 Hide
    Traciatim , July 29, 2014 7:29 AM
    @TomFreak, Tom's have already done an old vs new article that tested the core2duo and Quad vs newer i3's an i5's. No reason to redo the tests since you can pretty much extrapolate about where your performance would sit if you look over both articles. Bottom line is it's probably not worth going from a Core2Quad that overclocks pretty reliably to an i3 or Pentium, but in most cases the i3 and newest unclocked Pentium would perform slightly better and use less power.

    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ivy-bridge-wolfdale-yorkfield-comparison,3487-9.html
  • 2 Hide
    bdiddytampa , July 29, 2014 8:21 AM
    If you are in the US and are close to a Microcenter, they offer a G3258 and MSI Z97 board bundle for $99. Killer deal for a cheap starter system.
  • 0 Hide
    envy14tpe , July 29, 2014 8:33 AM
    Just to be clear. the Pentium is on a H81 with stock intel fan, right? I'd really like to see what each CPU has...mobo and cooler for this testing..it just isn't clear.
  • 0 Hide
    TechyInAZ , July 29, 2014 8:35 AM
    Very interesting article, the Pentium G3258 defiantly does show it's value in gaming and other areas on a budget.
  • 2 Hide
    LucoTF , July 29, 2014 8:36 AM
    Quote:
    Just to be clear. the Pentium is on a H81 with stock intel fan, right? I'd really like to see what each CPU has...mobo and cooler for this testing..it just isn't clear.


    "The Pentium, also topped with a bundled cooler and factory grease, ran exceedingly warm, too."
  • 3 Hide
    mrmotion , July 29, 2014 9:22 AM
    So when are you going to put the little guy on nitrogen and see what it will really do?
  • -4 Hide
    elbert , July 29, 2014 9:24 AM
    This is all well and good but with DX12 and Mantle. Will these dual core wins be disappointing? Once Intel tunes mantle will the i3 blow away the Pentium?
  • 9 Hide
    mamasan2000 , July 29, 2014 9:25 AM
    Stutter stutter stutter!

    http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-pentium-g3258-review

    Who cares how many FPS its pushing if its a stuttering mess.
  • -2 Hide
    bhauck , July 29, 2014 10:16 AM
    Is there a reason the 760K is never included in these types of articles?
  • -2 Hide
    James Mason , July 29, 2014 10:51 AM
    While I can understand that using a high GPU and SSD and tons of RAM makes it so we're only seeing the CPU's impact, I feel that such a high system with a low end chip doesn't make sense, or that it somehow doesnt show the real results
  • 2 Hide
    bhauck , July 29, 2014 10:55 AM
    Quote:
    While I can understand that using a high GPU and SSD and tons of RAM makes it so we're only seeing the CPU's impact, I feel that such a high system with a low end chip doesn't make sense, or that it somehow doesnt show the real results


    Well have I got the article for you then!
  • 2 Hide
    LucoTF , July 29, 2014 11:02 AM
    Quote:
    Is there a reason the 760K is never included in these types of articles?


    because it OCs just the same as a 750k?
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