GIGABYTE Updates its EasyTune App to Make Overclocking Intel's Pentium Anniversary Edition a Breeze
It might "just" be a Pentium, but I consider the G3258 "Anniversary Edition" to be one of the most interesting chips Intel's released in a while. It's a well-known fact that enthusiasts love ekeing as much performance out of their parts as possible, and there's just something about doing that to a sub-$100 part that can be seriously exciting. It's like buying a modest car and turning it into one that "wows" people.
While the G3258 has overclockers right in its sights, that doesn't mean that those who don't like manual overclocking can't benefit. For them, GIGABYTE's updated EasyTune, now shipping with a profile for this chip, can help. As hinted by this screenshot, it looks like GIGABYTE would expect a lot of people to be able to hit 4.60GHz with the mere click of a button - and that's a serious gain over the stock 3.2GHz.
Despite it being a full 800MHz over stock, GIGABYTE considers 4.0GHz to be a "Light" overclock, while "Medium" nets 4.2GHz. As always, not all chips are built alike, so that's where the "Auto Tuning" option can come in handy.
For those who take overclocking a little more seriously, GIGABYTE's provided a chart of what gains could be expected from the chip (and the other Devil's Canyon) if water-cooling or LN2 are brought into the picture. I admit that I'm very impressed to see 5.0GHz as a potential target under water - that's always been the holy grail of overclocks for me. Under LN2, which is definitely not going to be in everyone's future, 6.4GHz could be expected.
For a dual-core chip, there sure seems to be a lot of breathing-room in the Pentium G3258. It almost makes me want to pick one up, just for the simple sake of seeing how far I can push it. That feeling throws me back ten years, when overclocking AMD's S939 chips and trying to keep any RAM kit at CL2 felt like a mission more than a hobby.