Earlier this year, Intel announced that it would bring two new enthusiast overclocking processors to market — the Core i7-4790K (Devil’s Canyon) at the top end, and the low-end Pentium G3258. We’ve reviewed the Core i7-4790K recently, and found it wanting; the chip’s overclocking performance is only slightly higher than the Core i7-4770K’s, even if its thermals are much better — but the dual-core Pentium G3258 had more potential. With fewer cores under the heat spreader, there’s less of a chance of a hot spot choking the die’s performance.

According to the Tech Report, the G3258 has exactly the kind of legs that folks were hoping for. The chip proved capable of pushing from its 3.2GHz stock speed all the way to 4.8GHz with a final temperature of just 64C. That’s a 50% clock boost — not bad for a chip with a retail price of $72 (TR snagged it for $60 on sale).

Single-Thread superiority

One of the topics that comes up with great regularity in CPU reviews is whether or not single-thread performance remains important in the modern age. It’s not uncommon for an AMD fan to show up and declare that no, thanks to multi-threading and HSA, single-thread performance is utterly dead (or will be in the near future). There’s no doubt that multi-threading can provide a significant performance boost in many applications — indeed, in some tests, AMD remains competitive for precisely this reason.

What people forget, however, is that adding more threads only improves performance from your single-threaded baseline. In several of the applications TR tests, the Pentium G3258 punches far above its weight-class, beating past the quad-core AMD processors when both solutions are overclocked. In Crysis 3, this situation persisted — not only did the G3258 outperform the FX-8350 when overclocked to 4.8GHz, it nearly kept pace with Intel’s entire stable of Core i7 processors.

What’s most interesting for gaming is how the G3258 spends far less time above 33.3ms than any AMD solution, even the FX-8350 — and what an enormous difference the overclocking makes. Clearly, the chip’s high clock speed is compensating for its low core count — improving the clock speed by 50% cuts its time spent above 33.3ms by a factor of five. It’s not clear why this is happening — presumably, the dual-core CPU is running fast enough to handle multiple threads without a major performance penalty. If CryTek targeted a relatively low performance threshold (say, four Intel cores clocked at 2.4GHz), that would explain the difference.

The G3258 isn’t going to be a chip for everyone. While TR has promised a more thorough investigation, there are obviously going to be multi-threaded titles and applications where more cores trump higher clock speeds, particularly since both AMD and Intel have chips with eight threads on the market. AMD may also have a new core of its own available in the not-too-distant future — the current $99 option is the Athlon X4 750K, a Trinity-based chip from 2012.

If the G3258 keeps hitting these clocks, however, it has a real chance of cementing its status as a great budget option. Fast dual cores aren’t going to be an ideal match for every workload — but for $72? That’s a pretty sweet deal.