APU good enough for basics?

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admann

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Aug 27, 2014
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Are the AMD APU's good enough for basics? web browsing (mostly facebook), and playing world of Warcraft. looking to build a couple pc's for sister and her other half and this is all they need them for and the price look's good if they are what they say they are. thanks for all input.
 
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getdamafiaonyou
Ok so I said I'd get back to you after I built a machine using the A8. It has the A8 6600k currently at stock clocks (waiting for the non factory cooler, stupid holiday weekend) 8gb 1833, 2tb seagate sshd drive, windows 8.1. This was built for my g/f to use for school/work/daily crap. Her photo library consists of over 60,000 pictures, most of them are RAW files. I love the computer. It's very fast for what it does, I cant see why anyone would need more for normal use. She's used it for light photoshop work already and has no issues, hasn't noticed it being slow at all. I've played with it, it multitasks great, does everything it would ever need to do, and probably alot more. Thats coming from someone who's primary machine is a i5 at...
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"I5 and I7 beat all AMD cpus in WoW unless you use extreme cooling to OC the 6 or 8 core Vishera past 5ghz.

I3 is matched in WoW by the stock 8350 or overclocked 4300. I3 will beat 8320, 6300 and 4300 in WoW at stock clocks.

...the point of the A series APUs - they're meant to use with their IGP and give you the option to crossfire a cheaper Radeon with them down the road so it's easy on the wallet."

Not my words, but phrased from this forum:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7200052336

Hope this helps your decision. Seems like an Intel i5 processor would be the best choice, but given a strict budget, you may have to sacrifice the WoW performance, and stick with an AMD APU, if you plan on web browsing more than you game.
 
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Very much so. I would just make sure to get a four core/two module. Such as a A10-5800K. Word is there will be price drops after 9/1/14.
 
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Yes when the FX 8370 and 8370-E are released the FX line and probably the APU line will see price drops across the board.

As mentioned before the i3 (even a low clocked one) with its iGPU could handle
 
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Everyone told me an a8 would work for my setup, so today I ordered a entire budget build with a 6600k. If you can wait until saturday/sunday I can tell you first hand my comparison for everyday tasks, I'm skeptical about it because currently I'm using my machine with a i5 at 4.8 with 16gb ram, however it doesn't need to do what this one does, just work well for simple things and not freeze or be slow. If I dont like it, I'll send the chip/mobo back and buy an i5. Everything I've read says an a8 is the better value over an a10 (cpu side) because the a8 is only about 1% slower. Even so they should be enough for normal everyday use.
 
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yes i can wait, just looking for now so i can get a good idea of what i want
 
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Ok I know I'm just one person but I'm fairly objective in my expectations. So I can give you a fair comparison for real world every day use. If I forget/haven't by monday shoot me a PM.
 
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I would honestly go with either the a8 6600k, a10 6800k or the a10 7700k. The a8 for a low budget but good balance of cpu/gpu, the 6800k for best bang for buck, or the 7700k for best gpu performance. Also make sure you use high freq ram (no less than 1866mhz). This is VERY crucial to getting the most performance.

If you dont have any intention of overclocking, the a10 7800 is also a very viable option.
 
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An a10 7800 should be able to play wow if you're in a tight budget, the 7850k is even capable of running watch dogs at 720p and low-medium settings @30fps. For budget builds that you dont plan to upgrade they're great choices.
 
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Ok so I said I'd get back to you after I built a machine using the A8. It has the A8 6600k currently at stock clocks (waiting for the non factory cooler, stupid holiday weekend) 8gb 1833, 2tb seagate sshd drive, windows 8.1. This was built for my g/f to use for school/work/daily crap. Her photo library consists of over 60,000 pictures, most of them are RAW files. I love the computer. It's very fast for what it does, I cant see why anyone would need more for normal use. She's used it for light photoshop work already and has no issues, hasn't noticed it being slow at all. I've played with it, it multitasks great, does everything it would ever need to do, and probably alot more. Thats coming from someone who's primary machine is a i5 at 4.8 with 16gb ram, 290x, and a SSD. I think you'll be VERY happy with an APU, in fact I cant see why more people dont use AMD in their builds.
 
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My rig uses an a10-7850k with 8GB of RAM at 2400MHz, and I'm able to play stuff like battlefield 4, Call of Duty Black Ops 2, and Titanfall at medium setting, 1080p, 30+ fps, if you get an a10 or even an a8, you should be good! From what I've read, the a8-7600 paired with at least 1866MHz RAM would be the best value for the type of computer you described. Hope that helps!
 
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I'd say an APU would work just fine for your tasks. I myself use an AMD A10 for casual gaming and programming and it works just fine. I would recommend having a basic discrete graphics card to increase performance.
 
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APU's are perfect for grandma. A simple, only build it once, pc. The upper a8's and a10's will run 'set' media like Blu-ray all day and look great. The problems come in with games. Games are not 'set' media, they have massive amounts of variables and the more complex the game, the harder the gpu has to work. While an apu, paired with 2133 ram, has all the speed necessary for most games, what it lacks is the power that comes with a dedicated gpu. The die itself simply lacks the size to contain all the cuda cores, shaders etc etc, that a dgpu has. Simple games, yes, complex games, no.
Games like WoW are mmorpg, they are primarily cpu bound, vrs BF4 or Assassin's Creed, which are primarily gpu bound, so with faster ram, 2133 is the ideal ram for an APU, an apu will run pretty well. Games like Skyrim are majority single thread, so an apu is gonna such anyways, simply being AMD architecture.

Grandma isn't going to be into WoW, or BF4 or AC but will surf the internet, watch the occasional dvd or Netflix, and Facebook, play with pictures and YouTube recipes, all of which an apu excels at.

If you plan on stronger performance from a dedicated gpu, skip the APU, skip FM2+ and A88 boards and go either Intel i5 or AMD FX. To buy an apu, just to not use 1/2 it's potential is a waste of your money.
 
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agreed. With an APU you have a very low ceiling for performance via upgrades. Get a strong dedicated CPU and a strong dedicated GPU, they can be individually upgraded later on.
 
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I would say go for the a8 6600k. It has decent single threaded performance (especially overclocked) and a respectable igpu. Get an fm2+ motherboard. That socket isnt going anywhere and you can upgrade slowly to a dedicated gpu and then later on to a stronger cpu later.

AMD is commited to that socket for at least 2 more years, so there is room to grow, even though its not a high performance cou socket.

I play primarily sc2 (which is heavy cpu intensive game) on my a10 and it does fantastic.
 
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Yeah it's good enough to play older stuff on high/ultra and anything new on low at least. The a10 5800k could play Resident Evil 5 completely maxed out on 1080p ultra settings with AA all the way up to the max just in it's integrated graphics. Other stuff like the old Borderlands 1 had to be on 720p low settings.

Honestly though for the price and good igpu, they're good. I have an a8 apu laptop, and besides getting hot, it multitasks great. I just need a faster HDD and more ram, currently 500gb 5400rpm hitatchi hdd, and 6gb 1600mhz ram, although at worse 11-11-11-28 timings and not 9-9-9-24 that's more common, dunno how much better timings would make in the real world though.

Ideally you really want 1866-2133mhz ram speed. though :)
 
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The strongest cpu for FM2+ is the 750k/760k, which both perform barely above the a10s so an upgrade there is useless. With the a88 boards out, FM2+ has a limited lifespan unless AMD decides to renew that line, doubtful.

As far as ram goes, timing helps. 2133@cas9 is @17% faster than 1600@cas9, so 1600@cas11 is abysmally slow. For an APU 2133 is the sweet spot when it comes to the igpu. It has almost twice the performance over similar timed 1600, for not much more in price. The gap, however, between 2133 and 2400 is very small, especially when cost is taken into account. The performance to value ratio just gets worse above 2133, just the opposite for under 2133.

 
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