How good is the AMD Athlon X4 860k for gaming?

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JBDelta

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Hey Guys!

I want to know if any of you have an Athlon X4 860k, if so, how well does it perform with Skyrim or Battlefield 4? Does it get at least 60+FPS maxed for Skyrim and at least 40FPS for Battlefield 4?

Thanks in advance!
 
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Hello
If your GPU isn't big (not stronger than an R9 270X), the 860K will just work fine
If not, go FX 6300
If you have enough money, the i5 4440 would be the better choice, but only if you have budget, because the most important part for gaming still always GPU
TESV-Skyrim-Frame-Rate.png


(rolling eyes at the thread-crapping against AMD)

 
Hello
If your GPU isn't big (not stronger than an R9 270X), the 860K will just work fine
If not, go FX 6300
If you have enough money, the i5 4440 would be the better choice, but only if you have budget, because the most important part for gaming still always GPU
 
Solution
Performance isn't that bad. I have a 860K paired with a HD 7850 1GB GPU. ME:Shadow of Mordor runs on max except textures @30-40FPS but that's on 1280 x 720 or 1280 x 1024. DA:Inquisition runs okay on med/high settings.

The 860K @stock has a higher Passmark - CPU Mark benchmark number that a FX 4350. With a good motherboard and cooler you can potentially overlock an 860K up to 4.8GHz and 4.6 should be simple. Pair the 860K with 2400MHz RAM and surprisingly you will see increase in gaming performance of a few frames.

My conclusion is that the 860K isn't a bad performer but Intel has CPUs that will perform better at a similar/lower price range with the Pentium G3258 and they have more upgrade paths with an i3/i5/i7 Haswell or Broadwell. APUs will suffer in games (cpu bottlenecked) that utilize the CPU a lot.
 


 
I know a lot on here are mentioning some of the dual core intels that are slightly better for gaming though have recently read that before long new games will require a quad core cpu and the old dual core will not simply run though agreed if you got the right intel socket on your board should be a simple cpu upgrade
 
I have an Athlon 860K and my honest advice as such is: save yourself. For about a hundred dollars more than the price of that processor an i5 4960K can be bought--it would likely double your game performance. My real problem with going the AMD path in regards to motherboard socket and CPU is that no upgrades are coming for at least one year. Though fans are figuratively at AMD's doorstep with wads of cash in hand begging for better processors, AMD has stated that none [rivaling Intel performance] will come until some time in 2016.

After spending $120 on an AMD motherboard, ~$100 on the Athlon X4 860K, and another $200 on a AMD R9 285 GPU I realized that for what I spent I could have had better performance with an Intel-based system. More specifically, and I stress this part: if I would have spent just *$100* extra on a CPU my performance in games would be DOUBLE. Since I chose AMD, if I want better gaming performance I'll either have to wait a year or sell my system and use those funds to build an Intel-based PC. Bottom line: Intel rules and AMD drools.
 
I wouldn't buy an AMD CPU at the moment. However the upgrade path for both Intel and AMD are dead ends.
Intel are changing sockets as always with their next release to 1151.
The only thing you can say is AMD gave their customers a pretty good run with their socket. That was only because all they have released is rehashed versions of what is essentially the same chip for about 3-4 years.
I always laugh when I see people say get this Intel chip because you can upgrade later. Intel are notorious for changing sockets with every new chip.
I purchased the 2500k they immediately change to the 1150 socket or the 2011 socket. Now they change again. If your buying bleeding edge and are going to upgrade within a year you might get a chance to re-use the socket. Otherwise your replacing the Mobo as well.
 


Why would you buy a 700 series gtx when the 900 series are out? The gtx 770 costs over $400 new gtx 970 costs $330 and offers much higher framerates.
 


i have the 860k and a gtx 960 and i get about 50+ fps on bf4 ultra and 60+ on skyrim maxed out
 
A games FPS depends mostly on the graphics card, while the CPU is important and should have 4 cores for the more demanding games that can take advantage of them. I have used the AMD 860K paired with a GTX 750 TI Graphics card to get well over 60 FPS in most modern games.

Unlike the AMD APUs the 860K CPU HAS NO GRAPHICS BUILT IN. And CAN NOT produce any video with out a dedicated graphics card.

If you dont want to spend the $$$ on a graphics card then look to the AMD A8-7600 or A10-8750K its a Quad core CPU with Kavari graphics that will produce good results when paired with at least 8 Gigs DDR3 2133 RAM.

 


i3's won't have a problem since the system sees it as a quad core.
 
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