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Best FM2/FM2+ CPU

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Vyperrr

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Jan 6, 2015
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I need the best FM2/FM2+ APU or CPU for my next build. I NEED FM2/FM2+ as I already have bought an Asus
A78M-E motherboard which only supports FM2/FM2+ processors. I know there is non APU processors out there for this socket such as the Athlon 760K. What would be the best one?

Build is:
http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/Tr9VZL

I currently have the A8-6600K on there as I'm not sure what to get.

Sorry, I'm a big PC noob.
 
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Your A8 6600K is already an Richland Quad-Core. It isn't much different from an 760K except that it has an IGP and that it's stock clock is probably lower. It will overclock too. The 860K is the best CPU and the 7850K is the best APU for FM2+. I wouldn't necessarily upgrade to anything else in your situation. At least yet and when an upgrade is needed I would just upgrade to a different socket, and more towards Intel at that point.
 
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Stick with the A8. Overclock it if your platform is up to snuff.

The 860K is faster at stock, but not any faster (in some cases even slower) when overclocked vs a Richland quad overclocked.

The main thing that sucks about the 860K is that very few motherboards are shipping with BIOS that will even POST with that CPU without a BIOS update. I am a member of the 860K club on Overclock.net, and not one of us had a board with a working BIOS out of the box for the 860K.

I had such a fun time tweaking the 760K, but 860K is such a let-down for overclocking. I needed it for my kids' rig though so whatever stock is fine. 760K FTW (A8 same thing).
 
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Thanks guys! I'll stick with the A8-6600K and see if I have enough to get a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo to overclock! Hopefully I do, I'm only 14... Just over the age to legally sign up to this website.
I didn't want to make the switch to AM3+ since I already have bought a Micro ATX case and the Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboards suck... Unfortunately there's only two. One doesn't have a USB 3.0 Front Panel Connector and the other one doesn't support 1600Mhz RAM. The FM2+ build will be excellent for what I need and it's cheaper than going the AM3+ route.
 
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Supposedly the OP already has the A8 so whatever his budget is he can put all of it into the GPU or buy a decent cooler to OC his current A8 and then the rest for the GPU.

.:edit:.

OOPS Sorry Vyperrr don't get the A8-6600K like CTurbo said. I thought you meant you already had an A8-6600K but after rereading your post I can see you said that you already had the A8-6600K selected in the partlist instead of owning it. The A8-6600K is over $100 while you can get an 760K or 860K for less than that. I would choose Athlon X4 760K in your case as it's probably cheaper, it OCs higher, it's memory controller OCs higher and you won't have an issue with having to update your BIOS to just use the CPU like an 860K
 
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So what CPU should I get, I might need onboard graphics since I may not need a GFX Card. The build is only so I can play iRacing at 1080p/60fps on Medium settings.
 
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The 260X is $50 more than the 250X in Australia... Way over my budget.
Why shouldn't buy an A8-6600K and a 250X? The build is only so I can play iRacing at 1080p/60fps on Medium settings.
 
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I really don't know if I need a GFX Card... I can't find any benchmarks on the A10-7850k and it is $100 more here. There is not one store in Australia that sells any Athlon II X4 CPU's and I'm not buying one off of eBay or some Asian website.
 
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Well the IGP in the 6600K is an 8570D and from looking at it's benchmark it can play most AAA games decently at the lowest graphic settings on 720p resolution. I don't know what kind of game iRacing is but I don't think it's going to be enough to play on 1080p period and medium graphics. The IGP struggles to get 60FPS in low at 720p for a lot of games too.

.:edit:.

Well I looked at IRacing's system requirements and the recommend at least a Geforce 7800. I can't really find direct comparisons but Game Debate rates them pretty much the same. The 8570D seem to have more shader cores though. But actual users tend to recommend at least an GTX 4XX to run it on higher settings with good performance.
 
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Alright. Anyway, CTurbo said not to use a 250X with an A8-6600K. Many YouTubers do test rigs with A8-6600K processors alongside the R7 250 and they work pretty well so why shouldn't I do the same thing except with a slightly better GPU?

Weird.

I hate how everybody calls Intel an upgrade... Intel HD Graphics sucks and an i3 is over $150. That's only for a dual core let alone a quad core.
I also forgot that I'd be able to run both the Graphics Chip on the APU and the 250X in Crossfire... More of a performance boost.
 
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The reason why CTurbo and a lot of users may agree, is that it's a waste of money to get a A8-6600K that has an IGP and then pay money for a 250X which is the lowest GPU you can call a graphics card for gaming. People buy these two combos and similar ones because they can "Dual Graphics/Hybrd Crossfire" them and get a boost in performance. They buy this because the IGP will 'boost' the performance of the 250X but people should remember that the 250X isn't a strong card to begin with. In general a 760K with a 260X would destroy a 250X in Dual-Graphics. It's not always the case because some countries the prices are just too high (like yours).

Youtube is filled with people who don't know as much as they lead people to believe. In general they just like playing games and they like the attention and communicating with others who like the same. What may have also happened is that the users may have started gaming with just the IGP and later bought the 250X because of their small budget and because some IGPs can be paired with a lower end GPU. At the end what matters is your opinion, your thoughts on what will be enough, and the costs of the particular items in your country.

Also everybody calls Intel an 'upgrade' because they are indeed superior compared to AMD. Their Dual-Cores are priced high because they perform better than AMD Quad-Cores/Hexa Cores/ and sometimes even Octo-Cores in games. The reason is because of their strong single core performance and the fact a lot of games don't utilize a lot of cores/threads or do it in an inefficient way. For example the Pentium G3258 (pure dual-core) and 860K performs kind of neck and neck. The superior cores/architecture allows G3258 to outperform the 860K a lot even with 2 cores. On the other hand the 860K's extra 2 cores allow sit to perform better in games that utilize more cores. Additionally they will probably multi-task a little better. They both have weakness. On the other hand an i3 is also a dual-core but they have four threads total so they perform better than AMD Quad-Cores.

From what I've read briefly IRacing initially and maybe still only utilizes two cores. But they now do use 3 or more cores or will implement that sometime in the future. In that case an 760K, 6600K, etc will be good. Problem is the GPU. CTurbo suggested the 7850K because it's an 860K with an IGP that is similar to a 7750 which is between an R7 250 and a R7 250X. But it's too expensive or not available in your country so it's out of the question.

We provided you our recommendations and our opinions. Now it's your choice on what you decide to do. We're not going to force anything on you. If you want don't think you'll need a discrete GFX then you should start out by just buying the A8 6600K. But if by some chance the performance is not enough for you will regret it when your budget is low due to using extra money to get an 6600K with an IGP when you end up not being able to use the IGP due to being weak. I understand you can't buy any Athlon X4 series CPU so you don't have much choices. I might suggest you buy a cheaper quad-core apu then. Also look at the Pentium G3258 and see if the price is cheaper than the 6600K and how cheaper it is. At least with LGA 1150 and Pentium G3258 you can upgrade to a i5/i7 later and it will be very good processor for a good 3+ years.
 
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I'm 99% sure that the A8 will not run dual graphics with a R7 250x or even a 250


The A8 6600k would be decent at 720p gaming by itself with fast RAM. It should play most games at medium settings. It is not a viable option for 1080p gaming though(by itself).

Intel IS an upgrade in every way except in integrated graphics. A dual core i3 will smoke a quad core A8 in cpu power.
 
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I'm just going to stick with what I've done. I'm going to buy everything, build it, install everything and see how it performs. If I need a GFX card, I'll get an R7 250X or an R7 260X. I think any card in the R9 series may be a bit overkill for what I'm using the PC for. I could go with a lower end R9 270 though.

Thanks for the help anyway guys, much appreciated.
 
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Well it does in fact work with dual graphics...
 
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It does work with Dual-Graphics but I don't think it will with the newer R7 series that probably only work with the 7XXX series APUs. It might work now or at lest with an unofficial tweak. Go ahead with what you plan. You know the costs of prices at your country more than we do. But in order to run IRacing at higher settings you will indeed need a good graphics card. This is coming from a thread (maybe reddit) where IRacing players were talking

Thanks for the best answer, and I wish you good luck with what you're building
 
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It's very unfortunate that you cannot get your hands on any Athlon. I'm thinking your best bet is to sell your motherboard if possible and get a better platform. That or save enough money to get something a lot better than a 250x which would be pretty bad at 1080p.

The A8 6600k and 760k started life as the same chip. The A8 is like 30-40% more because of it's strong igpu. You would literally be paying extra for an igpu that you would then disable by adding a 250x.
 
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I know the A8 is capable of running dual graphics, but I'm pretty sure only Kaveri apus can run dual graphics with the R7 series gpus unless AMD has updated that recently which is possible I guess. Even then, and A8 + 250x in dual graphics would still not be as good as a 260x by itself.
 
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If things are expensive in Australia I wonder if selling the motherboard and going with AM3+ will be a cheaper path even though AM3+ is dead. Especially if Intel is priced even higher.
 
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Last I checked, official dual graphics support on richland was with HD6450/HD6570/HD6670.

When we combine an A8 with say, an HD6570, the result is about double the FPS in render bound workloads, but frame pacing is so bad that the perceived smoothness is worse than running with dual graphics mode disabled. The whole APU + GPU dual graphics thing is a worthless novelty that is technically incapable of working the way it is advertised.
 
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Yeah, I'd rather have AMD implement a way to use the IGP for physics calculations (tressfx) or other such things.
 
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