Hardware AMD A8-3850 Review

You could spend that £100 on a GTX460 and have much better performance than this.

 

Games might struggle without a cpu...

 

he already has the cpu...

 

I didn't say I was considering this as an upgrade - it wouldn't be cost-effective for my main rig. I'd have to replace my board and RAM, and I wouldn't get much of a performance boost over my E5200.

But if I was running this chip already, it would more than likely meet my needs without having an additional GPU. That means less power consumption, less cooling requirements, smaller case footprint, etc. If I needed more GPU power later on, or compatibility with some new DirectX version, I could add a dedicated GPU easily.

This is going to be ideal for the budget end of the market - AMD could potentially have a winner on their hands, if they can get buy-in from OEMs and system builders.

 

"I could do with a new GPU, but I'm not really sure that I'll get that much extra benefit for my investment. If I drop £70-£100 or so on a new GPU, there's very little chance that it'll make much tangible difference in the quality of visuals that I see - other than maybe being able to whack the AA up all the way"

Sorry, I read your previous comment which said the above so I made a recommendation that would make a tangible difference and wouldnt require a complete rebuild with new mobo and cpu. Your E5200 would last a little longer together with the GTX460.

 

To me the GPU is very very nice for an IGP. This should represent the minimum AMD and Intel do with future IGP's. The cPU though is very disapointing. Id love for them to use a bulldozer CPU with this level of IGP in for Llano 2.0. The power consumption might become an issue then, hopefully BD on the new process can calm that fear.

They are heading in the right direction and im sure we'll see them sell alot of these to OEM's and HTPC people but its still a generation or 2 from being great.

 

Llano Overclocking

 

is it just me, or does this all make more sense if I can get a cheap ITX motherboard to put this in...

oh - thanks Asus!