MSI E53, A8-5500 - can OC Genie do much?

[Andrew Maxwell]

Hi All,

Happy to announce that I am just dipping my toes into the APU world, so, hello!

It's a real budget build. I don't need much processing power (I'm coming from an Atom N270 netbook, so any improvement will seem amazing)

So I've bought

CIT S1100SB case
Kingston ValueRam 4gb
Kingston V300 120gb ssd
MSI FM2-A75IA-E53 motherboard

but I've yet to buy the APU.

I've been umming and ah-ing about the A4 to keep prices low...and it would be fine for my internet and office needs. But my greedyness has told me to get an A8 'just in case' I want to game (i have an xbox 360 but really don't like the controllers on any console) and wish to relive the glory days of playing games on my 486!

So now I'm pretty set on the A8 5500 (don't need the extra power of the 'K' and may as well save some money on the electric).

But...if I find I'm playing games more often and need a little more oomph...I'm really interested in this OC Genie thing.

As you can tell, I have no idea how it all works, but what I would like is to be able to press a button on bootup and have the machine overclock. Either to some random one the system decides or boot to a preset overclocking setup that I define.

If you have a moment, could you help me to understand whether OC Genie will help me do what I want. And (I'm aware the the CPU multiplier is locked) will OC Genie be able to do much, this being a is a non 'K' APU?


Thanks!
Andy (Bristol, England)

 

[oddlyinsane]

If it's a locked CPU (that is, a locked multiplier), then unfortunately OC Genie will not help much.

What APUs benefit from is fast RAM, and getting 1600 RAM would be ideal. This will increase the amount of frames you get in games. In addition, 1600 is well suited for overclocking on a budget.

If you are really looking into playing games, then I would be looking into a "K-series" AMD APU, like the AMD A8 5600K 4-Core Processor for instance. It is only around $5 more and you will have the ability to overclock. Not only will these increase CPU performance, but as well as FPS you get in games.

Hope this helps.