G3258 now with I5 Broadwell later vs 4670k now


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G3258 now with I5 Broadwell later vs 4670k now

Postposted on Mon Jun 23, 2014 2:25 pm

I'm looking at building a new system to be used for gaming and other stuff. The res supported won't be any higher than 1920x1080. My thought is to get a Pentium G3258 with a Z97 MB (probably the Gigabyte Gaming 3) now and OC the processor. Then some time next year pick up a Broadwell based I5. The alternative would be to pick up a 4670k or 4690K now and stick with that for the near future.
This would be married with a Geforce 650TI for the near term (though that might change when the next gen of video cards are released.)

So any thoughts on this choice?

My reasoning is that the G3258 when overclocked does very well with current games so it should be enough to get through to Broadwell. With the 14nm design there should be at least a 10% boost from the current I5 Haswell generation to the Broadwell I5 (based on the previous die shrink results.) Plus there may be other boosts that come from Broadwell, and the new CPU generation is supposed to be compatible with Z97 based motherboards.
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Re: G3258 now with I5 Broadwell later vs 4670k now

Postposted on Tue Jun 24, 2014 6:42 am

Personally, I prefer that the "heart" of the system be the way that I want it for the system's expected life, for a few reasons (in order):

1) you have no way of knowing for certain if future parts will be compatible
2) once you have it up and running, the whole process of upgrading the processor is kind of a pain
3) why spend more on parts you're only going to use for a little while?

Sure, the broadwell parts are "supposed" to be compatible with Z97/H97 boards, but you have no way of knowing. Maybe the board you buy won't get a BIOS update to add support. Maybe the power circuitry isn't up to the requirements of Broadwell. I believe this happened with some of the 6-series Sandy Bridge chipsets when the Ivy Bridge processors came out? Anyone recall? They used the same socket, should have been compatible, but some boards just weren't; I think some companies released "updated" 6-series boards prior to the release of the 7-series chipsets. But until all of the parts are actually available you just can't be certain it will work.

I think it's safer to think of the H97/Z97 boards as the "Haswell refresh" motherboards. If you want to go all out, put a Devil's Canyon proc in there and call it a day.

I'm assuming you have the 650ti already, hence the mention of it? What's your target gaming resolution?
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Re: G3258 now with I5 Broadwell later vs 4670k now

Postposted on Tue Jun 24, 2014 7:00 am

Yes, I'm already using the 650TI. Currently gaming at 1280x1024 for the most part but I'm looking at picking up a P2414H Dell monitor so most of my gaming would be at 1920x1080.

The compatibility issue is one reason I was looking at the Gigabyte Gaming 3 board. They tend to be good about updating their BIOS and they are pushing the Gaming line fairly hard. So there's a better chance that it would be updated to support Broadwell when the time comes.
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Re: G3258 now with I5 Broadwell later vs 4670k now

Postposted on Mon Jun 30, 2014 9:05 am

I'd just get a Devils Canyon i5-4690K now and not waste the $75 on a Pentium if you know you'll want an i5 within a year. I don't foresee Broadwell being a game-changer (especially when you omit the IGP). Just a marginal improvement over Haswell. The way CPU performance improvements have been stagnating, I'd predict an i5-4690K will/could last you a good 5 years in terms of processing power. (chipset feature additions/enhancements aside)
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Re: G3258 now with I5 Broadwell later vs 4670k now

Postposted on Mon Jun 30, 2014 9:52 am

I am with Pete...go with the 4690k. If the pentium had hyperthreading and you wanted to hold out I would say what the heck why not. But 2 threads just does not cut it these days when most games like 4 threads. Even though the games do not use 100% of 4 threads does not mean you do not get a major benefit from having them over 2 thread no matter how fast they are.

If you look at the benchmarks of the unlocked pentium even overclocked it is out performed by Hyperthreading dual cores. I really wish they did have the extra mb of cache and HT on the unlocked Pentium. Performance would be a good bit better. As of now it is a cheap overclo0cking toy to play with.

A i5 4690k will last you a long time...a i7 4790k would be better but you could always get one a year or 2 from now if games are really needing 8 threads. Or just build a new rig in a couple years and have 2 gaming rigs. I know when I had my 940pin FX53 and a x800xt and i upgraded to a new 939pin 4800x2 with dual x1800xts it was really nice having the 2 machines so friends could come over and game. At the time it was nascar 2003 and Warbirds a WW2 flight sim and even though we used roger wilco for wingman and squad communication it was awesome to be able to game 4ft from each other with my buddy screaming I have a 109 on me and me screaming back I see him Do the rolling scissors now so I can close the distance and and when I get in range Ill scream climb and he will die!!:) Gosh I miss Flying My P38 Lightning with 4 50cal and a single 20mm cannon in the nose.....it just cut planes in half since there was no convergence issues like wing mounted guns have where you set a range where the rounds cross in front of you. 300 yard was my setting for 6 gun planes and 400 for the p47 jug that ad 4 guns per wing. The most kills ever for me where always ammo limited so the P47 thunderbolt since it was the biggest single engine fighter of ww2 and 2 banks of 4 50 cal guns that could be fired in pairs of four with a large ammo loadout and a full tank of fuel racked me up a kill spree of 13 over a 3 hour flight that was ended by a FW190 Head on Attack that damaged my engine and caused a oil leak 50 miles behind enemy lines. Luckily I had a durable radial air cooled engine and not a inline water cooled engine and it happened at around 20,000ft so I was able to drop to 20% throttle and limp home. Believe it or not that was half the fun of the mission but you better believe I was on the radio to my squad mates giving them my position so they could help me get home wheels down.
As far as I know with me and my buddy being trainers for Warbirds that was the most air to air kills recorded but somehow in a S3 "Historical battle setting" my wingman and friend got 15 kills when he found a whole squad lined up on the runway preparing for takeoff and he dropped 2 500 pound bombs off his p38 in the middle of them ending their S3 mission quickly...Lucky SOB:)
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Re: G3258 now with I5 Broadwell later vs 4670k now

Postposted on Mon Jun 30, 2014 10:44 am

You're going to lose money selling a Pentium to upgrade to a Broadwell, and you'll have a slower processor in the interim than just buying a decent Haswell now.

Waiting for something that's 10% faster is pointless. 10% isn't fast enough to be worth the trouble. If it makes you feel any better we have a whole bunch of (like 250+) homebrew workstations here ranging from i7-2600 to i7-4790, and the difference between them is probably 15-20% or something. They do software renders and 3D modelling all day and NOBODY can tell the difference between them. You'd need to use a stopwatch to realise that one encode/render takes 17 seconds on one and 20 seconds on another. If you're gaming the processor is even less relevant since your GPU is always the limiting factor unless you're using a single-core Celeron or something.

One other thing, Sandy > Ivy > Haswell may have given 5-10% improvements per generation, on average but that's an average based on many things. 0-3% improvements for gaming and 5-20% improvements for various encode/hw-accelerated CPU tasks. Games basically run no faster on Haswell than they do on Sandy, and I seriously doubt Intel will make great strides with Broadwell since they're focussing on mobile power reduction above all else.
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