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I'm wondering what people's opinions on this chip are if your not overclocking it.

I have a bunch of machines running the very slightly different G3220.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/77773,82723

Pretty good chip for what I use it for.

The real answer will really boil down to what you are trying to do with this machine.

It's basically an i3 if you don't need the IGP or its features (quicksync is the main one).

If you have a dGPU, it's a pretty decent i3 alternative - because the SMT virtual cores in an i3 aren't that helpful. Some apps and games take advantage, but not enough to justify the price hike to an i3, and it's not like i3's can boost either. Realistically if you do a lot of stuff that needs more cores an i3 is the wrong choice anyway. The only reason I could ever recommend an i3 is when you need the IGP advantage (eg laptop).

Chrispy_ wrote:

It's basically an i3 if you don't need the IGP or its features ... [i3 isn't worth the price hike]

I somewhat disagree. I've seen a fair number of gaming benchmarks recently where the dual core Pentium falls flat on its face, so I wouldn't say the i3 is pointless. The virtual cores in the i3 might not be super helpful all the time, but they do catch background processes and overflow to help even out frame times compared to a Pentium. That said, I think the i3 does walk a fine line with some SKUs being so close in price to an i5, but double the cost of a Pentium.

I have a Phenom 2 X4 system that is starting to get page fault errors and the resultant blue screens. It would be used to replace that, it's uses are mostly a secondary system next to my gaming system to look things up while I'm gaming and in general is my email , surfing machine. I like the fact that it is easily overclockable , but would probably not given the machine's intended uses. Buying a dual core without hyperthreading seems foolish to me but with a Z97 board I could always change to an I5 down the road if the need arose.

If your computing needs are light and your budget is tight, the Pentium G3258 seems okay to me. Newegg has recently bumped the price up, but it's still just $170.65 to get a Pentium G3258 processor and a micro-ATX Z97 motherboard. You're saving $165 vs. a Core i5-4690K.

I've had both Pentium and i3 in my laptop. I can't say I've really noticed the difference at all, but it depends on the game I guess.

The benchmarks that prove i3 games better than a Pentium are usually conducted with a super-powerful GPU at a very low resolution in order to highlight the differences in CPU speed alone.
In almost all real-world gaming, the GPU is the limiting factor.

If it was the choice between an i3 with a Bonaire GPU (7790) or a Pentium with a Pitcairn GPU (R9 270) the Pentium would offer a much better gaming experience for the same price as the i3 setup.
If you take the graphics card out of the equation, then you get what you pay for, the i3 is superior to the Pentium.

I just assume that if you're in the market for a pentium it's because you're on a low budget and the GPU will be far more of a limitation than the processor - so a Pentium's $50-100 cost saving over an i3 can make a much more significant upgrade to the graphics card.