AMD gaming, are the processors

happychappy69

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Am looking for a cheap(ish) processor for a htpc/gaming build and I thought going the AMD route may give me "more bang for my buck", however after reading reviews online it seems that I'm wrong

My initial choice was for a fx4170 (black edition) but reading reviews it seems like a poor choice

Any thoughts/first hand experience
 
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The FX 4170 isn't a "true" quad core and it's equaled or bettered in most areas by the similarly priced i3-2100. You probably wouldn't notice the difference once paired with a decent graphics card so the choice is yours.
 
Looked on Amazon and there is several i3's between £90 - £120, which leaves me a little confused in terms of suitability

So any input would be appreciated
 
What about Pentiums? They can at least match any AMD CPU's when it comes to gaming and use less power.
If you want a really low cost computer you could get an AMD APU and run off integrated graphics with no dedicated graphics card
 
The i3 - 2120 or 2130 would be the better to choose from as they have the highest clock speeds (No realistic overclocking on the i3 series).

A mid-range GPU like a 7850 (overclock like a beast) would be a perfect match with 8GB of memory and you would have a great little rig.

I've read that the i3 ivy bridge chips should have dropped by now but I can't see them anywhere...
 
The FX series in general fall behind the pentiums/i3 when it comes to gaming value but the 4170 may be an exception due to it's large boost in clock speed. Unfortunately there are few benchmarks around for it so it's hard to tell.

The gap isn't particularly big though, so it'll likely do the job just as well even if it turns out that it's still 5% slower than an i3-2120.
 
Looks like the 2120 is the prime candidate, now to start looking for a mb bundle
 
cokker said:
The i3 - 2120 or 2130 would be the better to choose from as they have the highest clock speeds (No realistic overclocking on the i3 series).

A mid-range GPU like a 7850 (overclock like a beast) would be a perfect match with 8GB of memory and you would have a great little rig.

I've read that the i3 ivy bridge chips should have dropped by now but I can't see them anywhere...
I've seen some ES versions on eBay recently...
 
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EndlessWaves said:
£145 processor, £45 motherboard and £15 worth of memory, you're paying £15 more than buying them separately.

The moral of this story is not to go looking for pc bits whilst full of gin ( no I didn't buy it)
I was actually looking for a motherboard bundle with this
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8H77I/
Oh well back to the drawing board
 
At the moment I'd say the best budget htpc/gaming rig is the new AMD Trinity APU that's just been launched. Improved CPU performance on the old bulldozer chips and the integrated graphics are miles ahead of Intel. You can game without an additional graphics card on one of these.
 
At the moment I'd say the best budget htpc/gaming rig is the new AMD Trinity APU that's just been launched. Improved CPU performance on the old bulldozer chips and the integrated graphics are miles ahead of Intel. You can game without an additional graphics card on one of these.

The A10's graphics is only about twice as fast as the HD4000 and the more sensibly priced ones seem to be significantly slower (although there aren't many benchmarks around yet) so no, it's still a very poor choice for a budget gaming PC, instead of a £95 A10 you're far better off spending £105 on a £35 Celeron and £70 7750 (and at this point you'll probably save it on the motherboard cost anyway).

They're not as much of a joke as they used to be, but don't expect to play skyrim or similar on anything higher than low settings on a £100 monitor.

CPU-wise the A10 also drops the speed down a bit so although it's more efficient it's no faster than the bulldozer-based FX 4170 (which has now been benchmarked on a couple of sites and doesn't match up to the i3).
 
I'd be interested to hear on anyones experience with the a10 in regards to photo editing and, of course, gaming.

Would you a higher speed memory significantly improve performance?

And lastly are there any decent discrete graphic cards for gaming?
 
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I'm looking at this at the moment:

ASRock FM2A75M-DGS
AMD A10 5700 (The A10 5800K might be better for you, but I want 65w TDP)
8Gb 1600MHz RAM

The ASRock board has it's own HD 7000 graphics which does Hybrid Crossfire with the A10 AGP - not bad for a £45 A75 board! I've read that getting fast RAM can improve performance by around 20%, so it's definatly worth looking at getting some 1600MHz and over clocking it. Apparently it's very straightforward to overclock the GPU to 1000MHz as well. These reviews might be helpful for you:

AMD Trinity Review - AMD vs Intel - A10 5800K vs Core i3 3220

If Trinity Showed Up Today... : AMD Desktop Trinity Update: Now With Core i3 And A8-3870K

AMD Trinity On The Desktop: A10, A8, And A6 Get Benchmarked! : Trinity: Coming Soon To A Desktop Near You

The Toms hardware reviews are from the summer and based on prototype motherboards so they might not be fully accurate, but over the last week lots of new Trinity reviews have been appearing on the net.
 

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