Hardware The Best Sub-£100 CPU

Im not sure why you have recomended the A-8 3850 as the gaming only one as its slower than a 955 in just about everything.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/399?vs=88

If your not grabbing a discrete GPU then fine the A8 is a good choice but if your not then its not worth it.

 

As playing games in a fashionable manner will allways require a dedicated GPU so far, I'd say that the i3-2105 is still the best CPU (price/performance) currently around.

I'll tell you why.

The i3-2105 has enough power for your daily tasks (office, web, multimedia), and the intel CPU simply beats the AMD-stuff currently available. And I'm talking only about chips with integrated GPUs here.
The HD3000 is powerful enough for the standard person, who doesn't do anything special, but only web, office and multimedia.
And now the reason why it's way better then the A8-3850... it's the powerconsumption and TDP. This CPU is simply way more efficient and the way to go, if you want to build a small, silent, and lowpower PC for Average Joe.

With that said, I'm even happy with even less power for the most things, like browsing the web, or watching a movie. In these scenarios the E350 or the AtomION-platforms are even better suited, as they draw even less power.

Power-Efficiency is and should be the top-criteria for comparing systems. Be it PCs, cars, or whatever.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-a8-3850-llano,2975-13.html
With the exception of the big system killer games (BF3/Arma,I'm guessing skyrim) its actually capable of running pretty much any game despite its intergrated graphics.

 

I must admit, I haven't bought the hard copy CPC for a little while now, so I probably missed it if it was fairly recent, (I'd love the issue number if anyone has it to hand).

I do remember there being a face-off between a custom build and a shop build a good while back, ('Dell vs DIY' issue 59, and 'Make a Mac Killer' issue 70) which are similar to what I was suggesting, but not quite the same.

For a start, both of those times it was the CPC team verses the manufacturer, whereas I'm suggesting a face-off challenge between the individual bit-tech staff.
Secondly, both those previous challenges had pretty big budgets. If you're going to spend £1000+ today then there aren't that many different ways to do it successfully for a challenge - they'd all end up with fairly similar gear and it would be a bit pointless.

I think having a fairly low price point makes it much more interesting, because as this article shows, there are a lot more difficult choices to be made down the bottom end of the scale. Do you go for CPU over GPU? Shave a little off both and have more/faster RAM, or a better HSF for squeezing that extra few 100MHZ when overclocking?

Like in Top Gear, all the points of the challenges would add up as they went along producing a winner at the end. Caning one challenge would be no good if you bombed in the others. Challenges could be things like:

Games: Play MW3 & Skyrim at 1920x1080. Target is 25 fps on high quality, no AA = 0 points. Add points for every frame above 25, lose points for every frame below.

Energy Efficiency: Target 60W idle = 0 points, 200W load = 0 points. Add points for every 1W below, deduct points for every 1W above.

Time trials for encoding CD's & DVD's, etc, etc. All that could be in addition to the old CPC/bit-tech suite. A good all-round system test.

Maybe I'm getting a bit carried away, I just think that would be a really good way to show off some tech as well as demonstrate skill and judgement in competition.

That could end up being a huge article, and I bet most people would read it from start to finish...

 

It's issue 98.

And yes, that is the only useful information in this post.

 

Good enough for me, cheers for that.

(Definitely one I missed BTW - if CPC has started putting unique content back in the mag then I may have to start buying it again...)

 

Don't get me wrong, I love the article and think you guys offered some valuable insight. However I feel like there should be 1 more "buy suggestion" on the final page. Best all around solution. You've pigeon holed everyone into the "Gamer" and "Not Gamer" categories with no middle ground. What about those of us who like to game, but also need some basic grunt CPU work done but are on a tight budget as well? Is the A8-3850 or the i3-2100 better at that point? Or would you suggest a different solution like the 955 or the 560 and a discrete solution?

 

there's so much ddr2 floating around and you can still get some good socket 775 boards for so cheap.. why not just fix what you got

I built a nice clarksdale with the g6950 last year.. it does everything I need- the encoding is not going to be done in the same times but when I was doing benches middle of last year, overclocked I was beating much more expensive systems gaming.. the 460 at 906clk could play mafia 2 with the physx gimmick on and everything high smooth all on air

it reminds me a lot of the e6600, it's one of those chips that you can slap the nuts off the sides of it's face and it just keeps running stable.. see the benchmarks everyone shows on reviews are always at low res- 1600x to show the cpu caps.. like gaming at 1024x nowdays- who cares if you get another 200 fps like from 150 to 350fps.. your monitor is synced at 60 or 120

that's why you don't see 1080p benchmarks.. the gpu starts to become the bottleneck there.. the guy on the oc'd 2500k with the same card is seeing exactly the same thing I am (only add epeen)

anyways I built a system with a new case for under $700 US last year.. that's with a cheap aftermarket ac freezer 7 rev 2 cooler at 4.2ghz oc on a gigabyte h55m-ud2h (which got for 95 bucks new too)

so got the board, chip and 4gb of discontinued corsair ddr3 memory for around 250 shipped.. you can't even get a i7 2500k now days for under $200

it would be nice to get the i5 760 but it costs as much as the 2500k, so why not just get the sandybridge..

until the consoles go quad core, or your encoding all the time.. these cheap chips aren't just great for htpc or nas

 

good infromative article,

 

Did they forget the unlock ability of the sempron 145 and the phenom ii x2 560 ???

 

Sell a mag and release its contents on the website a few weeks later.. confused on business model.

 

The Phenom II X4 960T is the best one right now. Already ordered one. It's a locked X6 and can be easily unlocked to it's full potential. And costs about 100 pounds.

 

please revision intel core i7 2700k

 

I would have liked to see a 1156 CPU. Still possible to find cheap ones and with some serious overclocking head room.

 

Would have been nice to see how the AMD Athlon II X3 compared to the cheap pentiums.