Are AMD processors worth considering for mid to high end?

[DrMrLordX]

You have to wind an A10 up past 4.5GHz to meet or beat the slowest Skylake i3:

Yeah well I'll still kick yer butt in 3DMark! Er, assuming you use the iGPU . . .

wait, mid/high-end systems? Wait'll the AotS beta comes out! Yeah, that's it . . . yeah . . .

edit: btw, the A10-7800 is a non-starter nowadays, with the 7850k costing virtually the same:

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/cpu/#k=26&sort=a7&page=1

There's really no reason to get one of those chips. 7800 prices should correct downward, soon, if not immediately. If they don't, they won't sell.

Also, with Amazon pushing the 7870k for less than $10 more shipped . . . why get either one?

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

Well, yes, now that the 7870K is that low it makes little sense...except for constrained by heat/space builds. I've done almost entirely A8 rather than A10 builds, really, when there's a chance. But 95W is too much for the small budget cases...

 

[DrMrLordX]

All the GV-A1 chips require "undervolting" anyway, at least for those of us doing hands-on building. You can tame the beast. It just takes a little elbow grease.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yes, this makes my point: the really low end just doesn't cut it anymore. An A8 is about as low as I could stand giving anyone for a new build unless there is a really compelling budgetary reason.

Given that, and Intel may be moving the high-end i7 mainstream chips to octo-core (rumored), then do you think that they may add HT to the Celeron and Pentium Core chips? That would be a way of competing better with AMD on the low-end, and eliminate the "smoothness" problems (lack thereof) that escrow4 experienced? They would still be differentiated from i3 CPUs, due to lack of modern ISA features like AVX/AVX2.

 

[crashtech]

2C/2T is getting pretty marginal these days, it's time to bring HT to the low end.

 

[VirtualLarry]

2C/2T is getting pretty marginal these days, it's time to bring HT to the low end.

Considering some games won't even boot up on a 2C/2T CPU, I agree, Intel has to do something. Dual-cores' days are numbered. They don't want to be known as the CPU company that "can't play new games".

 

[Magic Carpet]

2C/2T is getting pretty marginal these days, it's time to bring HT to the low end.

It's time to bring 6C/12T to the mainstream. Are we there yet?

 

[Zodiark1593]

Considering some games won't even boot up on a 2C/2T CPU, I agree, Intel has to do something. Dual-cores' days are numbered. They don't want to be known as the CPU company that "can't play new games".

Quite ironic as their dual thread chips at high clock speed can stomp many competitor's 4 thread chips.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Quite ironic as their dual thread chips at high clock speed can stomp many competitor's 4 thread chips.

Not in terms of minimum FPS. I remember reading some G3258 OC versus AMD A8/A10/860K reviews, and while the G3258 may have had similar or slightly better averages, it also had the highest "frametime greater than 33ms" or whatever measures bad minimum FPS.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Not in terms of minimum FPS. I remember reading some G3258 OC versus AMD A8/A10/860K reviews, and while the G3258 may have had similar or slightly better averages, it also had the highest "frametime greater than 33ms" or whatever measures bad minimum FPS.

Didn't you have one or two yourself, how was it in games? First hand experience > any damn review. About the only game where it truly sucked versus AMD QUADs on my memory was GTA V. Are there more?

 

[Zodiark1593]

Not in terms of minimum FPS. I remember reading some G3258 OC versus AMD A8/A10/860K reviews, and while the G3258 may have had similar or slightly better averages, it also had the highest "frametime greater than 33ms" or whatever measures bad minimum FPS.

Meh, still can technically run the game, albeit at lower performance befitting a budget part. I think Ubisoft just locked the game from running on < 4 threads because they don't want the Pentium D and low-clocked Core 2 Duo holdouts from taking tech support time.

I wonder if a quad Atom part can launch the game.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Didn't you have one or two yourself, how was it in games? First hand experience > any damn review. About the only game where it truly sucked versus AMD QUADs on my memory was GTA V. Are there more?

I've heard that the G3258 sucks in Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 too, as those games really love quads (like GTA V).

The only game I own right now on Steam is Skyrim, and that game mostly likes fast dual-cores, so it seemed fine to me.

 

[AtenRa]

Even Core i3 has high frame-times in many current games. The dual Cores are really obsolete for 2015 games.

 

[TheELF]

Meh, still can technically run the game, albeit at lower performance befitting a budget part. I think Ubisoft just locked the game from running on < 4 threads because they don't want the Pentium D and low-clocked Core 2 Duo holdouts from taking tech support time.

I wonder if a quad Atom part can launch the game.

The consoles run their OS on the first 2 cores so every game starts from the third core,if a company doesn't even recompile the code for PC (exaggerating but not by much) it will try to start from the 3rd core and thus fail to start.

GTA V runs fine on dual
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=UK0_wOKv-rU#t=242
And so does Witcher 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lejul04cMmk

 

[Ranulf]

Why?What have you heard? Is gmail gonna raise minimum requirements to fullUHQ 3d stereoscopic CGI or something?
There are enough people around who say there is still no reason to upgrade from 1st gen core.

Skylake IGPU has improved a lot.

Besides, cheap systems are disposable,even granny won't mind spending another ~100$ in 2-3 years for a new system or a (better) GPU.

I'd generally just advise to going with a cheap mobile solution in that case as you'll probably get more for your money long term with a new cheap laptop every 2-3 years.

One of these days I should do a test with one of the 1037U setups I have. I have a biostar soc board in an itx case and that chip in a cheap toshiba laptop from 2013. GPU wise, I have a 550ti, 560ti, 7870 or 960 to put in the biostar setup. I think only the 550 and 960 would fit easily in the case though.

 

[2is]

Some of you need to get cozy with the fact that you may need to spend more than $50 to get a good gaming experience in some of the most demanding games. A G3258 is supposed to suck at TW3. If you think Intel is going to make all their higher end processors largely irrelevant by appeasing you and making a $50 Pentium powerful enough to do what you want it to do (which seems to be everything by reading some of these posts), you're beyond delusional, not to mention cheap.

Fact is, the vast majority of consumers can walk into a store, buy a PC with a Pentium processor in it, and it will do everything they need it to do for years to come, and that's exactly what it's supposed to do.

 

[scannall]

It can be. If you have a hard cap on your budget, for a gaming build then saving money on the CPU and motherboard will allow you to spend more on your GPU. Most games are GPU bottlenecked anyway. Pretty rare to find one with the CPU as the bottleneck, that has 4 or more cores.

 

[2is]

It can be. If you have a hard cap on your budget, for a gaming build then saving money on the CPU and motherboard will allow you to spend more on your GPU. Most games are GPU bottlenecked anyway. Pretty rare to find one with the CPU as the bottleneck, that has 4 or more cores.

Intel is a corporation not a charity. They aren't interested in providing you a gaming CPU for $50 so you can take the money you saved and give it to AMD or nVidia. Just like AMD and nVidia aren't going to give you a gaming GPU for $50.

 

[TheELF]

Some of you need to get cozy with the fact that you may need to spend more than $50 to get a good gaming experience in some of the most demanding games. A G3258 is supposed to suck at TW3.

"Good gaming experience" and "suck" are pretty subjective terms,and "supposed" is ... well, supposed.

A budget gamer will not shoot for ultra settings ,and every new console port sucks on some systems, even high spec ones,constant stutter, judder and massive frame drops reported from a lot of people in a a lot of games.
If a g3258 never drops below 30fps in tw3 then most people will call it a good gaming experience,no matter what kind of fps you are used to.

 

[2is]

"Good gaming experience" and "suck" are pretty subjective terms,and "supposed" is ... well, supposed.

A budget gamer will not shoot for ultra settings ,and every new console port sucks on some systems, even high spec ones,constant stutter, judder and massive frame drops reported from a lot of people in a a lot of games.
If a g3258 never drops below 30fps in tw3 then most people will call it a good gaming experience,no matter what kind of fps you are used to.

If your idea was to simply prove my point you've succeeded. Does a g3258 give you the experience of never dropping below 30fps in demanding games? No. Do higher end CPU's? Yes

Is a G3258 supposed to? If it was supposed to, it would since clearly Intel has the technology at their disposal to make it happen if they wanted to make it happen.

Bottom line, you're not going to get what you want for $50. Pentium processors are targeted at a certain user base, and PC gamers are not among them. That's why more powerful and more expensive processors exist.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

The G3258 is still a good cpu for the price imo, it runs aaa games decently, and it's great at more niche games like arma3 or mechwarrior online, that don't scale well with cores.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

The G3258 is still a good cpu for the price imo, it runs aaa games decently, and it's great at more niche games like arma3 or mechwarrior online, that don't scale well with cores.

As much as I like my G3258, I'd advise people to skip it at this point. Better to spend the extra $60 for an i3 6100 and be on the newer memory standard -- and also get twice the threads for a more balanced performer. The jitters on multithreaded games that I'm already seeing on the G3258 are only going to get worse moving forward.

 

[TheELF]

If your idea was to simply prove my point you've succeeded. Does a g3258 give you the experience of never dropping below 30fps in demanding games? No. Do higher end CPU's? Yes

For ultra setting...maybe,but as I said a budget gamer won't be reaching for ultra.

 

[TheELF]

The jitters on multithreaded games the I'm already seeing on the G3258 are only going to get worse moving forward.

How is it going to get worse?
The current gen consoles are here to stay for at lest another 3-4 years and dx12 will get rid of the driver thread so one less thread the duals will need to handle.

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

Why do these discussions always come back to gaming? Gaming is something most computer users simply do not do, certainly not at the level that an A8 would bottleneck.

For everyday usage, the A8 is just fine. I much prefer it over the i3 for the cost. For mid-range use the 8320E is an amazing bargain and the 8370E is basically a Sandybridge i7 for the price of a low-end Haswell i5.

After this, yes, it's all about Intel. But by the time we're getting past i5 levels it's really not mid-range anymore...