questions about AMD X4 740 and AMD X4 760K

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soulranger

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Sep 15, 2014
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Hello all. I am about to build a computer (the last one I built was over 10 years ago). It will mainly be used for everyday use with very occasional light gaming. I have done a ton of research and picked out everything I wanted, starting with the CPU and motherboard. I have now purchased all of the parts, except for the CPU. I was originally planning on going with the AMD x4 740 (model AD740XOKHJBOX). It is a 3.2 Ghz (3.7 turbo). However, I am now looking at the AMD X4 760 (model AD760KWOHLBOX), which is 3.8 Ghz and 4.1 turbo. The 760 is only $8.31 more expensive. So my first questions is do you guys think I should go with the 760, or is the performance increase so insignificant that its not worth it?

Next, I noticed that the 740 has a listed thermal power design of 65 watts, and the 760 is 100 watts. Despite all of my research I have performed in preparation for purchasing my parts, I feel as though there is still a ton I don't know that I should. My specific question that relates to the watts of the CPU is this.... I have purchased a tower that came with a 500 watt power supply. My graphics card is a Sapphire Radeon R7 250 1GB GDDR5, PCI-Express 3.0 (x16), which states that it recommends a 400 watt power supply or more. Now if the graphics card needs 400 watts, and the 760 CPU needs 100, does that mean this set up won't work with my 500 watt power supply (still have to consider the other components)? I wasn't sure if this is a simply calculation like that (adding the watts), or if there is more to it than that.

Lastly, I noticed on the specs sheet at cpuworld website, that both of the CPUs say "Other peripherals - PCI Express 2.0". Does this mean that these CPUs won't do PCI express 3.0? I thought the PCI express slot was a motherboard/graphics card thing, not a CPU thing? Both the motherboard and the graphics card are express 3.0.

If it matters, my build is going to be:
*Pioneer BDR-209DBK-KIT 16X Blu-ray Writer Drive
*Rosewill Black Hot Dipped Galvanized Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case with Front Panel and 500W Power Supply R536-Red
*Sapphire Radeon R7 250
*WD Blue 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache - WD10EZEX
*MSI Computer Corp. A78M-E45 Motherboard
*Kingston HyperX FURY 8GB Kit (2x4GB) 1866MHz DDR3 CL10 DIMM - Red (HX318C10FRK2/8)
*and of course whichever CPU I go with.

Sorry for the long post. Your help and opinions are greatly appreciated!!!

Mike
 
You should be fine with that power supply.

The 760k is worth the extra money, even if you don't intend to overclock.

Have you bought the gpu yet? If not I would HIGHLY suggest getting either an a10 6800k or an a10 7850k/7700k. The integrated gpu in the 7850k/7700k are just as good as the dedicated one you are getting, and the a10 comes extremely close, and the RAM you have for that build already couples nicely with the APU's. The only thing to consider before the kaveri is I think the mobo needs a bios update before they will work.

.You can either put the savings towards an SSD or a better deidicated GPU down the road.
 


Thank you for your response. I have in fact already purchased the GPU. In fact I already cut the UPC out and mailed in for a rebate, so I am pretty much stuck with it.
 
It's fine if you've already got the GPU. If you wanted the peace of mind of having integrated graphics for backup, the APU is a good choice. I personally really like having integrated graphics for backup incase the GPU ever dies
 


Thank you for the reply. I did purchase it already and even mailed in the UPC for a rebate. Choosing a CPU and whether to use a dedicated GPU or to get an APU was the most difficult of decisions because I didn't know enough about them. So I apparently made the wrong decision. I guess I should have come here sooner and asked that question lol. I guess I could always go with one of the APUs and then sell the GPU. But at this point I will probably stay with my dedicated GPU. Thank you for that link. How can I compare the "specs" of the graphics part of that APU with that of the dedicated GPU I have already purchased?

Can you provide any feedback on why you guys think my power supply should be fine? With a 400 watt GPU and potentially a 100 watt CPU, doesn't that use up all of my 500 watt power supply?

Thanks so much!
Mike

 
the r7 250 doesn't use much power, it doesn't have a power supply connector, it uses all it's power from the PCI express slot in the motherboard, you're fine with your 500w power supply. It's likely an OEM one that isn't really rated for 500w though. If you were to ever put a better GPU in it that requires a connector I'd honestly suggest getting a real name brand one. The EVGA and Rosewill Bronze certified PSU's are respectable. Some dog and talk down on the Corsair builder PSUs, but I built a Phenom x4 965 based PC with one of their CX500w PSUs before and it was fine.

The r7 250 will be slightly better than the APU graphics. Those are more in line roughly with the older hd 6670, which can be crossfired with the APU.

It's alright, we all make mistakes on our first build. I honestly went way overkill with my own pc
 


Thanks again! Any thoughts on the part from my original post regarding the CPUs and the PCI 3 express 2.0 / 3.0 ??

Mike
 
The new Kaveri APUs are the ones that support PCI express 3.0 , but there's really not a difference between 3.0 or 2.0 . I looked it up myself before and they said maybe at the most a 1-2% difference when crossfiring/SLIing top end GPUs at the time like the Titan GPU. I wouldn't worry about it, there wouldn't be a difference in your case. Your motherboard would support the Kaveri APUs too since it's FM2+ , the Athlon cpu you're looking at is just the regular older FM2. You can use FM2 in FM2+ motherboards, but couldn't use an FM2+ cpu in an older FM2 motherboard
 
What you could do is still get a10 7850k/7700k and crossfire it with your r7 250. You will get almost (and sometimes more than) double the performance of your current GPU.

PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0 performance difference is negligible and not noticeable.

 


You guys are amazing with your knowledge :) So much so that you continue to create questions lol. I'm not very familiar with the crossfire function (other than someone told me it doesn't actually work lol). If I would go with the suggestion to use a APU, is there anything I need to do to make the crossfire function work other than simply plugging the parts into the slot? And will this one do the crossfire also? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113333&cm_re=A8-6600K-_-19-113-333-_-Product

Thanks again!
 
No that a8 6600k is the older regular trinity fm2, and couldn't crossfire with the r7 250.

here's a test of the cheapish a8 7600 kaveri quad core APU, which can crossfire, it's good on power savings, not far off from the A10 7850k. Article is back from jan, but tests several games. http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/AMD-A8-7600-Kaveri-APU-and-R7-250-Dual-Graphics-Testing-Pacing-Fixed

it's only 7 more dollars than the older a8 6600k on newegg.

since you have an fm2+ motherboard, might as well go Kaveri haha.

http://www.amazon.com/AMD-7600-Graphics-Socket-AD7600YBJABOX/dp/B00LUH1N4O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411670675&sr=8-1&keywords=a8+7600
 
Like I said before, you really need to make sure your BIOS are current enough to support the Kaveri APUs. I checked and your motherboard does support them, but it has to have a relatively recent update. I don't know how to tell what the bios is currently short of installing a cpu and trying it. I made the mistake of buying a Kaveri APU on a FM2/FM2+ board, but it would only support the Kaveri after an update, and I had to get another cpu to get it to boot before I could update the bios and install my APU.

Either way tho, the a8 7600 is a great option but if you are interested in overclocking, you can only overclock it via the BF, which can't yield the same results as an unlocked "k" series APU. If you don't want overclock the a8 is definitely the way to go.
 
Whitesnake91, Thanks again for all of your time. I read the info on the link you posted about the crossfire test with the A8-7600. Much of the article was above my head unfortunately. However, what I did get out of it is that they fixed whatever the problem was by an updated driver. Would the current ones on the market have this, or would I need to update the driver myself somehow?

CptBarbossa, thank you to you as well for your time. Very good point you made about my board needing updated drivers to support the 7600. I certainly don't want to have to buy another CPU to boot it up just to get the update to allow me to use the 7600. Perhaps I can check with MSI and give them my specific serial number from my box and find out if it is currently supporting the 7600 as it sits.

I am really thinking about going with the 7600, as it is $108 on amazon and isn't too much more than my original options I was looking at. The only problem, however, is that the 7600 is a 3.1 ghz (3.8 turbo). The X4 760 that I was originally looking at was 3.8 Ghz and 4.1 turbo, which costs 82.55 on amazon. So it looks as though my choice comes down to $82.55 for the X4 760 with 3.8 ghz and 4.1 turbo and no APU to compliment my graphics card, or $108 for the slower CPU that will compliment my graphics card with the crossfire. Making this comparison is like comparing apples to oranges though I think. Thoughts???
 
the a8 7600 is using better architecture steamroller cores instead of the trinity in the athlon so it'll actually pretty much be on par despite the lower clock rate, if not actually slightly beat it. And yes the newer drivers fixed the issue. The last official AMD drivers are from back in April, they have beta drivers from last month. I personally only go with the official stable drivers after having BF4 crashing issues when using the beta drivers.
 
Yeah calling MSI might help.

The kaveri is a much more efficient architecture than the trinity and/or richland (though the difference between richland and kaveri are much smaller). You will get much better clock/clock performance, and you still can overclock if you want, it is just quite a bit more complicated than overclocking a "k" series APU.
 
Just thought I would update you guys. I called MSI and they used the serial number to determine that my board was manufactured in December of 2013 and would not have the bios needed to run the a8-7600. To have the bios needed, I would need a board manufactured after February of 2014. However, they emailed me a shipping label and I am sending them the board for them to update for me. They said 1-3 weeks which sucks, but at least I will have an updated board. So I have decided to go with the a8-7600 based on your recommendations. Thanks so much for all of your help!!

P.S. Once I have everything installed, how can I tell if the crossfire is working?
 
After you install the drivers you will go into AMD catalyst control center and under the graphics tab it should have a spot that say "Crossfire X" with an enable/disable button. Just hit the button, click apply and you are done.

Glad to hear MSI is taking care of you, even if the turn around time is kinda long.
 
Thanks for those instructions. So to make sure I'm understanding the crossfire feature correctly...... My graphics card has 1GB of ram. How many gigs does the a8-7600 have? I assume I add the two together to reach the total video ram of my system? When looking at the requirements of a game, for instance, if the game requires a graphics card with 2 gigs of ram, do I consider the gig on my card plus whatever is on the CPU when determining my specs?
 
In crossfire you do not add the two RAM figures. You take the lowest value and that is what you have, so you will be running at 1gb of RAM.

The 7800 will use the system RAM in tandem with the CPU. If a games requires a certain amount of RAM it is referring to system RAM, not your GPU RAM. Don't worry about your RAM specs. Based on your specs they will not be what is holding you back if you have any trouble in games.
 
I don't mean to sound dumb, but I apparently am lol. I thought the whole point of doing the crossfire thing was to improve graphics performance by utilizing both the GPU as well as the integrated graphics on the APU. If that is the case, then wouldn't the video ram on the APU and the video ram on the GPU kind of count all together when determining your system specs? I must not be understanding something correctly? Also are you saying that if a particular game requires a graphics card with at least 2 gigs of ram, then I wouldn't be able to play it even though I have video ram on the APU as well?

Also, since my board has a display output and so does my GPU, which display out put would I use? I originally would have to use the display output on the GPU since I was going to be using a CPU instead of an APU, but now that I am using an APU which output would I use? In other words, which video output "shows" the results of the crossfire? (I hope I explained my question correctly). Thanks again!
 
first, the only reason you typically need more that 1gb of ram on your GPU is if you are running multiple monitors or are running high res (higher than 1080p). I don't know of any game that requires more than 1gb of RAM on your gpu.

Think of it like this. The AMD FX 4300 is a quad core CPU. It benefits from 8gb of RAM in gaming. The FX 8350 is essentially TWICE the CPU, but doesn't need any more RAM to be much better for gaming. The RAM doesn't dictate the performance of your GPU up to a certain point, and you haven't hit that point.

You will want to use the display output on your discrete GPU.
 
Thank you CptBarbossa and Whitesnake91 for all of your help, time, and information. You guys were a huge help. I learned a lot! 🙂
 
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