AMD Price Cuts

[crashtech]

Wonder if they will lower the price on the Athlon x4 860k. It is now very close to the new price of the A8 7600, which has an igp. Sure it overclocks, but seems like they should cut the price on that 15 or 20 bucks.

Yeah, if they could get it down a bit more it would make a compelling bid coupled with a 750ti or the like. Newegg has them for about $78 right now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819113379

 

[SickBeast]

The Intel Pentium G3258 still stomps all over these junk AMD CPUs.

AMD is so poorly run that they figured Bulldozer was a good CPU and required several "sequels". Steamroller, Piledriver, and Excavator. They somehow thought that refining one of the worst CPUs of all time was a good idea. Go figure. Now we have to wait until 2016 to see their new core. I'm not holding my breath.

 

[crashtech]

The Intel Pentium G3258 still stomps all over these junk AMD CPUs.

This is unhelpful, and not entirely true. Not all G3258 CPUs overclock well. If you are stuck with one that will only do 3.9GHz like one of the ones I got, an 860K would be the one doing the stomping in a fully threaded game. Like I always try to tell the fanboys, it's about the intended usage, etc.

 

[SickBeast]

This is unhelpful, and not entirely true. Not all G3258 CPUs overclock well. If you are stuck with one that will only do 3.9GHz like one of the ones I got, an 860K would be the one doing the stomping in a fully threaded game. Like I always try to tell the fanboys, it's about the intended usage, etc.

I have had 3 of them. One hit 4.4ghz, another one hit 4.5ghz, and the third hit 4.6ghz. TBH if you could only hit 3.9ghz you did something wrong.

Did I mention that they cost about $55? $75 on sale with a motherboard?

AMD has nothing useful to offer.

 

[ElFenix]

The Intel Pentium G3258 still stomps all over these junk AMD CPUs.

AMD is so poorly run that they figured Bulldozer was a good CPU and required several "sequels". Steamroller, Piledriver, and Excavator. They somehow thought that refining one of the worst CPUs of all time was a good idea. Go figure. Now we have to wait until 2016 to see their new core. I'm not holding my breath.

i don't think AMD had the money to scrap bulldozer - though maybe continuing respins/refinements to Ph2 would have been a better use.

this is a tangent. we can go talk about it in a new thread if you'd like.

 

[crashtech]

I have had 3 of them. One hit 4.4ghz, another one hit 4.5ghz, and the third hit 4.6ghz. TBH if you could only hit 3.9ghz you did something wrong.

Did I mention that they cost about $55? $75 on sale with a motherboard?

AMD has nothing useful to offer.

You don't know what you are talking about. Go crap somewhere else.

 

[ShintaiDK]

i have to wonder if kaveri was up in price just to move trinity/richland parts? intel's previous parts dry up almost immediately upon release of a new one, but we're still seeing trinity parts on sale in quantity.

I would guess they simply overestimated their product and what people was willing to pay for a tad faster IGP. Their recent megablunder with the 800$ FX chips shows the same issue.

The case for Richland/Trinity seems to be their never ending inventory issues. To compare, Intels total inventories including raw materials and work in progress is only ~4x larger with a ~10x higher revenue.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I really don't know what you are on about. Kaveri plays most games at modest settings and the most popular ones at near max. Good enough is good enough.

Unless you can get something much faster for little additional cost, which is the case with a dgpu. I dont really understand why some are so determined to promote apus for gaming. Even if you want to promote AMD, their low end Athlon with a discrete AMD gpu is a much better solution.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I have had 3 of them. One hit 4.4ghz, another one hit 4.5ghz, and the third hit 4.6ghz. TBH if you could only hit 3.9ghz you did something wrong.

No, you were just lucky. My sample only does 3.8Ghz stable. Plenty of G3258 CPUs won't do over 4Ghz.

 

[SickBeast]

No, you were just lucky. My sample only does 3.8Ghz stable. Plenty of G3258 CPUs won't do over 4Ghz.

How much voltage did you give it?

 

[VirtualLarry]

How much voltage did you give it?

The max, 1.2v on a GA-H81M-DS2V. And before you tell me to get a Z97 board, that kills the whole value equation of getting a cheap G3258 CPU + mobo combo.

Edit: I got the CPU + mobo for a hair under $80 for both.

 

[monstercameron]

Unless you can get something much faster for little additional cost, which is the case with a dgpu. I dont really understand why some are so determined to promote apus for gaming. Even if you want to promote AMD, their low end Athlon with a discrete AMD gpu is a much better solution.

Not everyone can be as privileged as some of you forums goers who have unlimited budgets. I would prefer not to spend more than is necessary and if that means I can play lol at 70 fps vs 200 fps [with a more expensive system] then so be it. Good enough is good enough.

 

[SickBeast]

The max, 1.2v on a GA-H81M-DS2V. And before you tell me to get a Z97 board, that kills the whole value equation of getting a cheap G3258 CPU + mobo combo.

To each their own. My z97 board was $70. Not expensive IMO.

 

[VirtualLarry]

To each their own. My z97 board was $70. Not expensive IMO.

I thought that ECS Z97-PK board + G3258 deal at Newegg for $104.98 was interesting. I was curious about that ECS board's supposed "one-click" BIOS feature for overclocking that CPU to 4.7Ghz.

 

[escrow4]

I really don't know what you are on about. Kaveri plays most games at modest settings and the most popular ones at near max. Good enough is good enough.

Most popular being what? Son of Rome won't go near max, neither will Watch Dogs, neither will any AAA game this year or most last year not even close to 60FPS. Casual facebook games sure.

 

[SickBeast]

I thought that ECS Z97-PK board + G3258 deal at Newegg for $104.98 was interesting. I was curious about that ECS board's supposed "one-click" BIOS feature for overclocking that CPU to 4.7Ghz.

It's worth it IMO. Z97 is broadwell compatible as well. At 4.5ghz the g3258 has run every game I have tried very nicely. At 3.8ghz I could see it starting to bottleneck. The crappy gigabyte boards are only good for non gaming htpcs IMO.

 

[cbn]

Unless you can get something much faster for little additional cost, which is the case with a dgpu. I dont really understand why some are so determined to promote apus for gaming. Even if you want to promote AMD, their low end Athlon with a discrete AMD gpu is a much better solution.

Not everyone can be as privileged as some of you forums goers who have unlimited budgets. I would prefer not to spend more than is necessary and if that means I can play lol at 70 fps vs 200 fps [with a more expensive system] then so be it. Good enough is good enough.

I think the A10-7850K will probably end up more expensive than the Athlon x4 860K plus low end discrete card. (re: 1.) video cards seem to go on sale more often than A10 APUs and 2.) unfortunately the for the A10-7850K there aren't too many fast 2 x 2GB RAM kits on the market. In fact, newegg doesn't list anything faster than DDR3 2000 for 2 x 2GB. This means 2 x 4GB is pretty much mandatory to get the most out of the A10 iGPU even if the game only needs 4GB or less).

 

[monstercameron]

Most popular being what? Son of Rome won't go near max, neither will Watch Dogs, neither will any AAA game this year or most last year not even close to 60FPS. Casual facebook games sure.

please don't be so unreasonable

yes the apus can't max out the latest and most demanding games but certainly they can max out or comfortably play the most played games. LoL, counter strike, wow, dota 2, minecraft, any source based game, all indie games. Also to top it off the cpu isnt a slouch either, word processing? video editing? graphics design etc.

 

[cbn]

yes the apus can't max out the latest and most demanding games but certainly they can max out or comfortably play the most played games. LoL, counter strike, wow, dota 2, minecraft, any source based game, all indie games. Also to top it off the cpu isnt a slouch either, word processing? video editing? graphics design etc.

I wonder how many of those games could be played with just one of the dual core APUs?

Definitely not Battfield 3/4 64 multiplayer (at least ideally), but I'm thinking many of the other games yes.

 

[frozentundra123456]

OK, I give up, because every time this "discussion" arises, APU proponents say "oh, it is good enough". Maybe, but I just dont understand why one should settle for "good enough" when performance so much better is available for so little additional cost. It is not like you are scrimping and saving to put food on the table. Gaming is spending discretionary income for crying out loud. Spend just a bit more and get a far better experience. And we are talking about better performance that makes the difference between playable and non-playable in some games, not whether you can run at high or ultra. But each to his own I guess.

 

[positivedoppler]

OK, I give up, because every time this "discussion" arises, APU proponents say "oh, it is good enough". Maybe, but I just dont understand why one should settle for "good enough" when performance so much better is available for so little additional cost. It is not like you are scrimping and saving to put food on the table. Gaming is spending discretionary income for crying out loud. Spend just a bit more and get a far better experience. And we are talking about better performance that makes the difference between playable and non-playable in some games, not whether you can run at high or ultra. But each to his own I guess.

You can always spend a little more and get better. Simplicity of mb, cpu, and ram done! Is a real nice line in the sand for a lot of people.

 

[monstercameron]

OK, I give up, because every time this "discussion" arises, APU proponents say "oh, it is good enough". Maybe, but I just dont understand why one should settle for "good enough" when performance so much better is available for so little additional cost. It is not like you are scrimping and saving to put food on the table. Gaming is spending discretionary income for crying out loud. Spend just a bit more and get a far better experience. And we are talking about better performance that makes the difference between playable and non-playable in some games, not whether you can run at high or ultra. But each to his own I guess.

maybe in the 20th century. Look at the list again, how many of those are free to play:

• LoL
• Dota 2
• team fortress 2
• WoT
• Warframe
• hearthstone

all high quality games that dont cost anything upfront! Money is hard to come by and If I can save $20, $30 etc then that is a compromise I am willing to take and I doubt I am in the minority. Then again that is just anecdotal and I have no solid data on the matter. Frozen, I completely understand you, you are debating perf/$ but apus were never perf/$ kings. IMHO they are just good enough cpu and gpu perf for the majority of pc users and gamers.

 

[VirtualLarry]

OK, I give up, because every time this "discussion" arises, APU proponents say "oh, it is good enough". Maybe, but I just dont understand why one should settle for "good enough" when performance so much better is available for so little additional cost. It is not like you are scrimping and saving to put food on the table.

This is why every PC gamer should have a 5830K and dual GTX980s! #PCMasterRace yo!

 

[Cerb]

OK, I give up, because every time this "discussion" arises, APU proponents say "oh, it is good enough". Maybe, but I just dont understand why one should settle for "good enough" when performance so much better is available for so little additional cost.

At some point, you have enough. Maybe it's $500, maybe it's $700, maybe it's $1000, maybe it's $1300...

If you don't play action-heavy 3D games, you can often get by with a pretty low-end CPU and GPU. And, unlike many of us, the extra performance and image quality is superfluous, to many. As long as they aren't going in with incorrect expectations (which do have to get set straight sometimes--your $700 PC including OS and monitor will not max out anything newer than 12 years old, at 1080P ), it's all good.

OTOH, also consider the non-gamers, for whom 2C4T might be helpful over 2C2T or 1C2T, but 3.3GHz Kaveri v. 3.5GHz i3 will mean jack; but an SSD over HDD, or bigger SSD than smaller, or more RAM, or not having a cheap scifi prop for a case...

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

OK, I give up, because every time this "discussion" arises, APU proponents say "oh, it is good enough". Maybe, but I just dont understand why one should settle for "good enough" when performance so much better is available for so little additional cost. It is not like you are scrimping and saving to put food on the table. Gaming is spending discretionary income for crying out loud. Spend just a bit more and get a far better experience. And we are talking about better performance that makes the difference between playable and non-playable in some games, not whether you can run at high or ultra. But each to his own I guess.

Good enough is exactly that..... My backup Game PC is sporting an APU, which is what my friends use when we do a little LAN gaming or some online multiplayer.

Good luck buying a video card and CPU for the $35 that I scored my used A6-6400K on eBay. That APU's iGPU plays every game I throw at it in medium to high detail at 720p..... For low cost gaming builds, nothing touches the APU.