Upgrade to AMD A8-3870k?

[Guest]

Specs:

AMD A6-3650
Sapphire Radeon HD 7850 OC-edition
Patriot G2 2x4GB DDR3 1333MHz

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My question is: if I upgrade to an AMD A8-3870k, will I see a difference in performance large enough to justify buying it?

 

[rolli59]

If you overclock it I would belief so. At stock clocks it would barely be noticeable.

 

[nekulturny]

I'm not sure it would be worthwhile honestly. I'd ask why you bought a llano and paired it with a 7850 in the first place, but I guess thats neither here nor there. Llanos are best as stand alone APUs without discrete graphics.

 

[Guest]

I'm not sure it would be worthwhile honestly. I'd ask why you bought a llano and paired it with a 7850 in the first place, but I guess thats neither here nor there. Llanos are best as stand alone APUs without discrete graphics.

I'm on a really tight budget, and had to decide whether to get an excellent CPU and a bad GPU, or a decent CPU and an excellent GPU.

Thanks for the answers.

 

[Guest]

Best answer selected by reboh79.

 

[nekulturny]

Understandable, I just wish you had of gotten a Phenom II for a gaming rig. Llanos are basically Athlon IIs with an onboard graphics chip. Athlon IIs further are basically Phenom IIs without an L3 cache. Now this cache can be important depending on what game you're playing, (between 5 and 20 percent give or take). Mainly for information purposes at this point since you already have the board and APU.

You have a pretty powerful video card in the 7850 that should last you a few years, my advice would be rather than upgrading the APU with a 3870K to save a little more until you have enough to get a more appropriate motherboard and CPU. Be it an Intel i5 or an AM3+ mobo with a Phenom II 965 something like that.

I know people say "blah blah, i3 better, Pentium G820". This is 2012, get a quad core CPU for the sake of system longevity lol.

 

[Spankymcbob1]

I have the same gpu and I have the apu that you are thinking about installing I would say Buy it and buy a aftermarket heat sink. I would also recommend overclocking it to 3.6. I get 89 fps in wow on ultra maxed everything and 44 fps on bf3 max setting so if you got the money go for it dude

 

[Soul_keeper]

I own 3 fm1 motherboards and 4 3870/3850 llano cpus.
No combination of parts resulted in a stable overclock above 3.4GHz.

Don't believe the massive overclock rumours and poor review sites with unrealistic claims. They are mostly just booting into the os and snapping a screenshot before they crash. The problem is most the fm1 motherboards just don't supply enough power for the massive overclocks. If you plan for a higher than 3.3/3.4GHz oc with the 3850/3870 none of the 4+1 phase boards are likely to get you there.