A4, A6 or A8 with discrete?

[Timothy1201]

Building a mitx pc. Wondering would it matter really to get an a4 or an a8 apu if I'm going to also get a discrete gpu? Difference is $30 which I could put towards a gpu. Which gpu would you recommend? Gaming at 1080p

 

[rgd1101]

reason for not getting an intel cpu?
budget for your build?

 

[Timothy1201]

Got a mitx fm2+ motherboard with Wi-Fi from a friend for dirt cheap. Also got a coolermaster mitx case for dirt cheap. Already have ram and hard drives. Just need apu and gpu. For an Ali and gpu not looking to spend over 200. Gaming at 1080p re7, skyrim, bioshock infinite

 

[Ecky]

All of these CPUs are pretty bad for gaming, and FM2+ is a dead socket with no new CPUs coming and thus no upgrade potential.

The A4 is a single-module CPU, not quite a full dual core - the two cores share resources and if they're both in-use, performance suffers. Each core is similar in performance per clock to a Core2Duo, which you could have picked up circa 2005-2008.

The A6 and A8 are dual module CPUs, not quite complete quad cores - if more than two cores are in use, there's a performance penalty. They perform about the same per clock as a Core2Quad, circa 2007-2008.

Most games these days are starting to need at least 4 hardware threads to run well, and in a handful of cases, an A4 would not even be able to load some games. If you're playing only MOBAs and older titles you'll be alright. The A6 and A8 will do better since they have more cores, but because of how slow each core is, you'll find the more demanding titles will perform poorly.

Food for thought: Intel's $60 Pentium G4560 greatly outperforms any of them while using half the power, and is on a current socket which will be receiving new CPUs. You could drop in a Core i5 or even i7 later if you find performance to be lacking, whereas with the AMD chips, you'll need to replace the motherboard and RAM too, since there are no upgrades.

 

[Timothy1201]

Thanks for the input but one of the major reasons for this build is not having to buy other parts. I have a motherboard, I have tons of ram I do understand that I could upgrade to newest intel or Am4 from amd but that would require a larger investment than I am willing to make at this moment.

So my question was would I be better off with an a8 with a graphics card or an a4 or a6 with a better card since I'll have an extra 30 to 40 to spend?

 

[Ecky]

The A4 is simply too weak, it's borderline too weak for even basic desktop usage such as web browsing. Your best bet is actually an Athlon x4, which is an A8/A10 with the integrated graphics disabled, and sold for a lower price.

 

[Timothy1201]

Thank you i was not even aware of anything in the fm2 socket that wasn't an apu