Upgrading A4-6300 to A8-6600k/i5-3570k

[PEZ123]

Hi.
I have an ancient A4-6300 CPU sitting in an office system. Skype and browsing with chrome is the most intensive work the machine will see. The machine has 8gb ram and an SSD, so that should be fine. But the user is now complaining that the computer is generally sluggish.

I have the option to change it to an i5 3570k, which aces the A4-6300 in all aspects. If I didn't feel like changing the motherboard though, my option would be to change the A4-6300 (1 core/2 threads, 1mb lvl 2 cache), to any Richland/Kaveri CPU which would be in the same ghz range but with 2 cores/4 threads, and 2x2mb lvl2 cache.

Looking at comparisons:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-A4-6300-APU-vs-AMD-A8-6600K-APU/2083vs1946
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-A4-6300-APU-vs-AMD-A8-6600K-APU/m10639vsm3344
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/AMD-A8-6600K-vs-AMD-A4-6300

the single core speed is about the same, the benefit should be in the extra core. Would this however make any difference in a general Windows environment, where the user may have Word, Excel and a few tabs open in Chrome, at the same time?

 

[superninja12]

lets be honest, not really a real world difference.

those numbers are meaningless, try cloning your hdd to a ssd. that will give you a difference.

 

[Bad luck Brian]

lets be honest, not really a real world difference.

those numbers are meaningless, try cloning your hdd to a ssd. that will give you a difference.

.....have you read the question?

 

[Bad luck Brian]

Hi.
I have an ancient A4-6300 CPU sitting in an office system. Skype and browsing with chrome is the most intensive work the machine will see. The machine has 8gb ram and an SSD, so that should be fine. But the user is now complaining that the computer is generally sluggish.

I have the option to change it to an i5 3570k, which aces the A4-6300 in all aspects. If I didn't feel like changing the motherboard though, my option would be to change the A4-6300 (1 core/2 threads, 1mb lvl 2 cache), to any Richland/Kaveri CPU which would be in the same ghz range but with 2 cores/4 threads, and 2x2mb lvl2 cache.

Looking at comparisons:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-A4-6300-APU-vs-AMD-A8-6600K-APU/2083vs1946
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-A4-6300-APU-vs-AMD-A8-6600K-APU/m10639vsm3344
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/AMD-A8-6600K-vs-AMD-A4-6300

the single core speed is about the same, the benefit should be in the extra core. Would this however make any difference in a general Windows environment, where the user may have Word, Excel and a few tabs open in Chrome, at the same time?

that depends on how "hard" you multitask i suppose. i have about 12 tabs open right now and i often run other stuff over it so 4 core is no-brainer to me.if you run less then 10 tabs and have say ms office and 1 .mp4 file on the back ground i don't think it should lag out your dual-core. if it is then maybe it is time to upgrade. honestly depends on if you stumble across any cheap fm2 processors.
the lagging is probably not to do with storage since u have 8GB and SSD, if you do lag it is you CPU or iGPU. check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piledriver_(microarchitecture)#Desktop to see what you need, which can be either more cores or more iGPU cores.
or maybe the "user" downloaded some .exe files off pornhub. a 2 core ~4ghz should not lag "in general". just "optimise" windows for him by msconfig, startup program, check for any malware-like program sucking up resources. or it could be throttling. i don't know, im a bit skeptical.

 

[PEZ123]

I will format the machine while I am at it ;-)

Well, the A4-6300 is a single core CPU, while the rest are dual core. Also, that APU-line (Piledriver/Steamroller) is in general very slow, compared to Intel CPUs form the same year, so even a dual core APU might not help much.

Even the i5-3570k smokes the A4-6300 in all aspects:
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-3570K-vs-AMD-A4-6300-APU/1316vsm10639
So the best solution would probably just be to change to the i5-3570k, which I have access to, instead of experimenting with more APUs...