The Pentium G3258 Cheap Overclocking Experiment

athlon whimpers into the corner, and pentium flexes its skinny little arms

13828161 said:

First page (in bold heading):

Wait, Did You Say B81?

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

LOL

they were offered both and settled on the H81

U guys should throw in Core 2 quad 9550/9650 and bench together or even the Nehelem quad core to compare.

@ 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.

@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

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.