Intel Pentium Anniversary Edition Review: Back to its Legendary Overclocking Roots

For more than a decade tech-savvy users on a budget would commonly buy a sub-$100 CPU and achieve performance comparable to $200-$300 chips by overclocking. The practice dates back to the early Pentium and Celeron days and was a practical way to extract more performance out of low-end systems until Intel locked its Celeron, Pentium and Core i3 ranges about four years ago.

In fact, even most Core i5 and i7 processors have locked clock multipliers, forcing users to spend big to overclock. The last time we saw overclockable budget CPUs from Intel was during its Core 2 days when you could pick up a Core 2 Duo E7200 for a whisker over $100 and easily push it to 3.8GHz, a 50% boost that let the chip crush the then $850 Core 2 Quad Q6600 and $266 Core 2 Duo E8600.

Although the clock multiplier of the non-Extreme Edition Core 2 processors was still locked, this architecture responded very well to front-side bus (FSB) overclocking. The E7200, for example, came clocked at 2.53GHz using a 266MHz FSB with a 9.5x clock multiplier, yet it would happily accept a 400MHz FSB, resulting in a frequency of 3.8GHz!

In a move to improve CPU performance, the FSB was eliminated and we now have what is known as the base clock. Unlike the front-side bus, the base clock only allows for very minor alterations and overclocking it by just 10MHz isn't an easy task.

Even Intel's most extreme overclocking-orientated processors, such as the Core i7-4790K, are tuned using just the clock multiplier. Moreover, it means the cheapest Intel CPU available to overclockers is the Core i5-4670K, which isn't exactly made for budget systems at $240.

However, to mark the 20th anniversary of its Pentium brand, Intel has released a special fully unlocked Haswell dual-core Pentium G3258 for $72 -- just what the overclocking community has been waiting for.

Today we not only plan to overclock the Pentium G3258, but demonstrate its capabilities in two builds that the most diehard gamer could be proud of. The systems are based on Asrock's Z97 Anniversary motherboards, one is a standard ATX and the other uses the micro ATX version. Below is the full list of components used for each build.

Corsair Dominator Platinum 8GB 2133MHzCorsair CS Series Modular CS650M

Kingston Fury DDR3 8GB 1866MHzSilverstone Strider Essential ST60F-ESB 600WNext Page ATX Build Core Components

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Intel Pentium Anniversary Edition Review: Back to its Legendary Overclocking Roots

For more than a decade tech-savvy users on a budget would commonly buy a sub-$100 CPU and achieve performance comparable to $200-$300 chips by overclocking. The practice dates back to the early Pentium and Celeron days and was a practical way to extract more performance out of low-end systems until Intel locked its Celeron, Pentium and Core i3 ranges about four years ago.

In fact, even most Core i5 and i7 processors have locked clock multipliers, forcing users to spend big to overclock. The last time we saw overclockable budget CPUs from Intel was during its Core 2 days when you could pick up a Core 2 Duo E7200 for a whisker over $100 and easily push it to 3.8GHz, a 50% boost that let the chip crush the then $850 Core 2 Quad Q6600 and $266 Core 2 Duo E8600.

Although the clock multiplier of the non-Extreme Edition Core 2 processors was still locked, this architecture responded very well to front-side bus (FSB) overclocking. The E7200, for example, came clocked at 2.53GHz using a 266MHz FSB with a 9.5x clock multiplier, yet it would happily accept a 400MHz FSB, resulting in a frequency of 3.8GHz!

In a move to improve CPU performance, the FSB was eliminated and we now have what is known as the base clock. Unlike the front-side bus, the base clock only allows for very minor alterations and overclocking it by just 10MHz isn't an easy task.

Even Intel's most extreme overclocking-orientated processors, such as the Core i7-4790K, are tuned using just the clock multiplier. Moreover, it means the cheapest Intel CPU available to overclockers is the Core i5-4670K, which isn't exactly made for budget systems at $240.

However, to mark the 20th anniversary of its Pentium brand, Intel has released a special fully unlocked Haswell dual-core Pentium G3258 for $72 -- just what the overclocking community has been waiting for.

Today we not only plan to overclock the Pentium G3258, but demonstrate its capabilities it in two builds that the most diehard gamer could be proud of. The systems are based on Asrock's Z97 Anniversary motherboards, one is a standard ATX and the other uses the micro ATX version. Below is the full list of components used for each build.

Corsair Dominator Platinum 8GB 2133MHzCorsair CS Series Modular CS650M

Kingston Fury DDR3 8GB 1866MHzSilverstone Strider Essential ST60F-ESB 600WNext Page ATX Build Core Components

View the original article here

Intel unveils business-class SSD Pro 2500 Series with self-encryption

Intel recently announced a new edition to its Professional Family of solid state drives, the Intel SSD Pro 2500 Series. These new business-class drives offer a wealth of security and manageability features, fast performance and a lower total cost of ownership according to a press release on the matter.

All of the drives in the Pro 2500 Series are self-encrypting drives (SED) that utilize hardware-based 256-bit encryption. They also feature the Trusted Computing Group's OPAL 2.0 standard and are Microsoft eDrive capable, policy-based controls designed to help prevent data breaches.

Rob Crooke, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group, said the need to protect assets, keep an eye on the bottom line and ensure employees have the best tools is a challenge for IT departments.

The Intel SSD Pro 2500 Series is a well-rounded solution to help balance those often competing needs, he added.

Pro 2500 drives will be available in both 2.5-inch and M.2 form factors with capacities ranging from 120GB up to 480GB. Sequential read/write speeds check in at 540MB/sec and 490MB/sec, respectively, across the board while random 4KB read/write speeds vary depending on capacity.

A total of 10 drives have been added to the Pro 2500 family as of writing, all carrying a standard five year warrant. Unfortunately, Intel didn't provide a release date or pricing for any of the new models.

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