I've been doing research for a potential slim gaming rig for connecting up to a 32" TV and I've been looking at FM1 vs i3, as I don't really play anything that requires over the top graphics, I may add a graphics card later but for the moment I want to focus on the drivetrain. As some of you may know im a bit of an AMD Fanboy but after buying a laptop powered by their AMD 'Vision' Premium I've been a bit disenchanted at the whole company due to its incessant overheating and tbh although I still root for the underdog I wont be using my money to by a product of theirs if its inferior again. I initial went with the FM1 because I thought it was a more future proof socket than the ever changing line of intel processors and sockets, then I found out there were more bulldozer CPUs to come so I thought I'd be best to sit and wait for the line to expand. More recently I heard of a supposed FM2 socket as early as next year which left me wondering how future proof a FM1 socket PC is
Firstly, FM1 isnt exactly future proof from what ive been reading. Secondly, what res is the 32" TV, and what games will you be playing ? Currently according to CPC the AMD A8 3850 had the best onboard GPU.
Pretty sure FM! will be replaced next year with FM2 and the Bulldozer-based APUs. The imminent bulldozer chips are only CPU's so you'd need a discrete GPU. The A8 3850 isn't a lot of money so might be worth going for now as the iGPU is impressive for what it is.
Budget is completely dependent on how future proof the PC is, I'm not gonna spend £500 on something that's not gonna last at least 2 years before its dated tech and tbh at the moment im only looking for a drivetrain as I have all the other junk lying around
you obviously have a maximum you would like to spend though, the cpu's your talking about aint anywhere near as future proof as the 2500k for instance.
I7 2600k is about as future proof as it gets at the moment. Fm1 isn't future proof at all and bulldozer isn't an apu.
This! Tbh, there is no such thing as future proof, if all your doing is using the computer as a htpc and light gaming then FM1 would serve you quite well, obviously it will probably be out of date by next year, but surely so would an i3, and although FM1 might be out of date next year I'm sure it would serve you quite well for at least 3 years. So essentially it comes down to how long you want something to last, what your going to be doing with it 2 years down the line, if your going to be staying with light gaming and htpc stuff, then I'm sure an FM1 build would last you very well, stick a small SSD in there and a large 2TB or 1TB storage drive and you'll be set. Also that laptop you purchased could have absolutely nothing to do with AMD and everything to do with the company that produced it, probably cut corners and didn't listen to AMD's cooling requirements for the chip.
