I'm getting in a muddle here. Trying to put together a build for general use with some gaming of Everquest and LotRO. There will also be some minor video editing from a HD camcorder for holiday snaps. I don't mind waiting for the edit to churn away as it won't be often. The main problem with the games currently is lag, especially when loading into busy areas. Am going to use an existing GPU - ATI Radeon HD 5450, with the possibility of upgrading at a later date. Am looking at builds with 8Gb RAM, and a 128Gb SSD for the OS and programs. I already have a larger HDD for data storage. I'm really undecided on the best CPU. I want it to last at least 3 years before being upgraded. Which would you suggest: Core i3 3220 AMD A10 5700 Core i5 3330 The i3 is the cheapest, the A10 is about £8 more, and the i5 is about £40 more again. Is it worth the £40? If not, am I better going for the better single core performance of the i3 over the A10 multi cores? I know the A10 has better inbuilt graphics, and is likely going to be equivalent or better than the current GPU I have, but I'm looking to the future too. When I get a better discrete GPU, which CPU will be best with it? Many Thanks
if you plan on getting a discrete GPU avoid A10. APUs are only worth buying if you're going to use the graphics, mediocre otherwise get the i5, it's worth the extra for a quad look into the fx 6300 though, it's a good value at its price
I5 + exisiting GPU for now will be good. With the easy option of upgrading GPU later. Just make sure on PSU requirements too, those cheeky chaps like saying "no wont run".
Even better value. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-330-AM&groupid=701&catid=1967&subcat=1946 Its an A10 with no GPU. Any spare money towards a better GPU. A 5450 is really crap so save as much as you can on the CPU and focus on that.
A10-5800 (or 6800) with 8GB of 1866 ram - the 6670 on the A10 is far ahead of the 5450 you currently have.
http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-HD-6670-vs-Radeon-HD-5450 Dont expect ground breaking leaps, but the above will show the pro's and con's versus each other
its far ahead - I have them both ; my children game on the 6670 quite well on `older` titles , like swtor and wow - the 5450 struggles in facebook `mafia wars`..... edit: that website is seriously messed up - the 6670 has 10x the bandwidth of the 5450 400 more shader units between 5x and 7s pixel and texture throughput.... http://www.hwcompare.com/10438/radeon-hd-5450-vs-radeon-hd-6570-oem-1gb/ lower clocks on the 6570 than the A10 yet far ahead of the 5450
echoed although reading Harlequin's post would have be revoke my echo. I'll try catch it when it bounces back.
Really depends when/how much you're going to spend on the discrete gpu. If it's not a lot then I'd probably recommend the APU, since it should outperform your current gpu and has enough cpu grunt
Thanks for the replies. I'm getting more confused now! The i5 is the most expensive by at least £50, but wins out in the benchmarks for single & multi core performance, though not by much. It's over £80 more than the X4 740K. So do I go for the i5 and upgrade the GPU later, or get the X4 and upgrade the GPU now? Which would be best in the mid-long term? Would I get a decent GPU for ~ £80? Are the LGA 1155 B75 mobos roughly equivalent to the FM2 A75 mobos? The A75 mobos only seem to have PCIe v2.0 - am I going to have a problem finding an upgrade for the GPU at a later date? They do have more SATA 6Gb ports though. I'm not interested in overclocking at all. Thanks
PCI-E 3.0 is backwards compatible with PCI-E 2.0, so that's non-issue you'll be able to find PCI-E cards for years to come, you can still get AGP cards nowadays lol
Go with the 740k. When gaming unless your pairing it with a £300 graphics card it'll be identical to a i5. And go for a cheaper PCI 2.0 board. The current top end cards don't saturate it yet and if you got a card which does in the future you'd be wanting a new CPU as a 740k would bottleneck. Also for FM2 board go for Matx. Much more choice and keener price for the feature sets.
It is easy to get confused with all the different pros and cons of building a budget pc. The i3's are very quick processors in low threaded apps because clock for clock they perform as well as i5's. Only dual core though so can be limited in some games and apps. The i5 will have great stock performance, will run rings around the i3 and the FM2 stuff in processor heavy tasks, will give you plenty of performance if your future needs require it. The FM2 Athlon is cheap and cheerful but stock performance especially in low threaded stuff is pretty poor by modern standards. As you do not plan to clock that may be something to think about. My personal choice is the i5 as you can spec a Haswell i5 and a B85 motherboard for sub £200 which is peanuts for what it offers.
Especially with a £100~ card later on. But if cost is an issue and i didnt want a discreet gpu, I'd go for the a10 6700 myself. Might put one in my htpc for a bit of living room Fifa etc myself.
Thanks guys. I hadn't looked at the Haswell CPUs as I thought they would be much more expensive. Turns out there's pretty much no price difference between a i5 3330 and an i5 4430. I feel a bit like I'm on a see saw, but I think I'm coming back round to my original idea of an i5. Thanks
Better CPU will certainly help in the ''busy'' areas of games when a lot of is happening at once. If your planning on keeping the current GPU for now and are happy with the FPS on average in the games you only play for the moment, then an i5 will at least save you the time of upgrading this again come another title. A strong CPU will help also for your general computing tasks, but also save splashing out again 2 years down the line when another nice titled game requires it, where your GPU will be needing an upgrade anyway.
gaming is swinging back to being GPU bound , BF3 for example shows little scaling on most cpu`s - from £100 to £800 , with the same video card they offer the same performance
I think you people are overlooking this is someone using a 5450. That's the first priority. So either a 5800k with even an APU being far better or a cheap CPU so there's money for a new GPU. He's playing MMORPG and doing some holiday snap editing. Even a 740k will last 5 years with that kind of work.
If you can afford an i5 it will certainly be a nice step up, another option you might want to consider for a cheap GPU upgrade is looking at buying 2nd hand? These days you can pick up a 2nd hand GTX 460 (for example) as low as £40 which is massively faster than what you have currently and will save you a lot of money vs an equivalent speed new graphics card.
