[citation][nom]Teslarifle[/nom]$210 for board+CPU combo that doesn't play Skyrim well on any sort of reasonable settings. Assume adding something like a 7850 2GB for better gaming performance. Contrast that with $270 for a 2500k+ASRock board, same 7850, and you are going to blow away the performance of the A10 in every single benchmark and probably run any modern game at max settings. There is no reason anyone should be an AMD APU for gaming, period.[/citation]
It's not a high-end nor even a mid-ranged option... Honestly, I wouldn't put any of these boards in an APU system. I reserve APU systems mostly for very low-budget entry level gaming systems and I tend to throw in one of the cheapest boards around for that (IE $40-60, ASRock had an awesome deal for a decent A75 board at $40 a while ago and it as perfect for such systems).
For example, an A10-5800K with the ASRock FM2A75M-DGS and Xigmatek Gaia cooler can be had for a mere $~195. That's a decent CPU, entry-level GPU, and entry-level motherboard with a cooler for some minor to moderate overclocking. Throw in an Antec VP-450 that can be had as cheap as ~$32 and a cheap case such as the Rosewill Redbone/Blackbone U3 or RoseWill challenger (can be had as cheap as $25-45 depending on deals, at least one of them is usually around $30) and you almost have an entire computer for a little over $250. All you need at that point is a storage drive or two (can be had for around $40-60 each), possibly also an optical disk drive (which can usually be had for about $10 thanks to combo deals from Newegg with many Rosewill cases) and all that's left is memory. A decent DDR3-1600-2133 8GB kit can usually be had for $30-45 and you can spend less than $300-350 for an entire entry-level gaming machine.
Not everyone has the money to spend on a mid-ranged to high end system. If this is all that someone can afford, a very common situation, then it is what that someone is likely to consider buying. Good luck making a similarly performing Intel system for less money. Oh, and don't bother with a Pentium or Celeron, it turns out that they're almost as good as i3s in synthetic comparisons, but a real world comparison leaves them being junk compared to even low-end AMD triple and quad core models:
discrete gaming performance with Radeon 7950 800MHz Catalyst 12.3:
Even the best Pentium, the Pentium G2120, can't touch AMD's Athlon II x4-comparable models such as the Llano A8s and Phenom II x4 850 in real-world performance (the FPS was calculated in average frame latency instead of average FPS for a more accurate representation of the experience's smoothness than FPS can provide and granted it's still not perfect, it's much closer to perfection than measuring in average FPS). You'd also have to throw in at least a Radeon 6670 DDR3 or similarly performing discrete graphics card for the Intel systems because their IGPs can't keep up.
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