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Building new budget PC - AMD Fusion?

S

sh0ckw4ve

Junior Member
Hello

I am in desperate need of a new PC. The main purpose will be internet/office/video and light gaming. By light gaming I mean mostly older titles - my previous vid car, GF 6600GT was able to run everything I wanted to.

PC will be used very often, and it could even serve as small server from time to time - which means that it could stay powered up for few days straight, but beside occasional game the load on resources should be minimal.

I am on real low budget which ranges from $150 to $200. I can spare some extras if it will be worth the buck, but I preffer to spend as least as possible. The location is Poland - country with rather high prices, usually they are 30-50% higher than ones in USA, but there are exceptions and sometimes price level is similar. Note that low Polish Zloty(PLN) just made things even worse, and imported goods cost more. Polish currency lost more than 10% just in few days and is still going down.

What I got is just old ATX case, IDE 160GB HDD, 23" HDTV widescreen LCD(native 1920x1080) and peripherials. This means that I would need new Motherboard, CPU, Video Card, RAM and PSU. Probably also SATA HDD because there aren't many Mobos supporting old PATA anymore. I cant find any FM1 one for example.

Computer will probably have few operating systems, with Win7 as main one and WinXP+Linux(not sure which distribution) as secondary ones.

Now, what I have planned is:

*cheap APU - I have completly no idea whats worth and whats not

*cheap Mobo - again no idea which brand, model etc... to mention something, it would be good if mobo would support IDE HDD's but as I said before, probably its impossible. In this case I will need at least one working PCI slot for:

*PATA->SATA PCI adapter - which will allow me to connect my IDE HDD to SATA mobo

*SATA HDD - due to high prices, I will probably get some small, used one just to install Win7. Not sure how much space will be needed for Win7. Hopefully WinXP and Linux will be able to boot from IDE HDD, which will also serve as main storage.

*DDR3 RAM - again, I dont know how much do I need... 2 or 4GB? And clocks? The difference between 1333 and 1600 is usually less than $10, is it worth the price? Some people told me that AMD Fusion greatly benefits from faster RAM. Is that true? Probably I will run Win7 x64 as main OS.

*PSU - again, I will need to get something used to save money. From what I know, a good 350W PSU with strong +12V rail is enough for the Fusion. Is that true? What should I look at which selecting PSU for Fusion?

Now while I'm still on power topic - reviewers wrote that Fusion consumes very little energy, ~40W idle / ~150W load. I don't know how good is it when compared to alternatives, but some people even wrote about underclocking Fusion just to save even more energy. And they claim that underclocked it's still stable at stock speeds even in 3d. I'm not any green-geek, btw D: but since 1st Jan 2012 electricity prices in Poland are going to skyrocket by 30%-50%.

Now the opposite, overclocking - if its worth of it, eg. unlocking new features, reaching some certain breakpoints(sorry but I'm not good with current hardware so I don't know anything about current OC trends), although I am very aware of the fact that in budget line overclocking is usually impossible. And obviously I preffer stability over speed.

This post does not cover all my concerns, so I might fill it a bit later, but until so I hope that someone will comment on this.
 
sh0ckw4ve said:
I am on real low budget which ranges from $150 to $200. I can spare some extras if it will be worth the buck, but I preffer to spend as least as possible. The location is Poland - country with rather high prices, usually they are 30-50% higher than ones in USA
Click to expand...

Have you considered buying a used computer?
 
Yes, and that is second most possible option for me after AMD Fusion. Still even for used PC's I would need some advice.
 
Okay, since noone responds I will make small modification. The $150-200 budget is optimal budget, but I can spend more - hence questions on what is worthy.

I am not limited to AMD Fusion. Besides Fusion and used PC of any kind, I am interested in Celeron G530 rig. I don't even need vid card in a frist place, as it can be bought later on.

I am interested in certain info not provided in reviews, Power consumption of fully loaded Llano rig with dual graphics combo and power consumption of Sandy Bridge rig with discrete graphics. Same with idle. Results could be interesting, as it will show overall chipset power saving performance.
 
I realize you're in poland. I'm going to post newegg links so you can look up the pricing.


Intel
Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813138332
RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220480
IDE Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815158084
CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116409
GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127591
PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817371033

Total : 213.95 (don't know how much it would be in Poland)

AMD
Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157277
RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220480
IDE Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815158084
CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103955
PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817371033

Total: 210.96

I don't think you will need an Antec Earthwatts PSU to light up your PC but ... I would rather be safe than sorry. Keeping in mind that the prices in Poland may differ. I know in South Korea, PC parts are pretty expensive due to import taxes. So it could be true in Poland? Not sure. These are the best two I could come up with. Sorry they go over your budget by just a hair.
 
Thanks for answer. Prices in Poland are 10-15% higher on those sets you've posted, but I can still afford them. Take note, that I will be getting used PSU, which will cost around $25.

In the first config, you gave link to mobo without PCI slot - so adapter won't fit, but thats not a problem because there are many cheap H61 mobos, and some even have got native IDE ports. Also vid card with DDR2 is a waste, even for such a low price. I'd rather stick with HD2000 for a while then upgrade to something better.

The second set - I would get 1600Mhz RAM because AMD Fusion benefits from it(GPU is using system RAM so you get more FPS in games with better RAM clocks) and if money would allow, A6-3500.

I am concerned with power consumption and performance atm. It seems that Sandy Bridge with dedicated GPU consumes much more energy during full load. For example with HD 5870 it drains around 300W. I'm still researching on this and comparing to Llano.
 
Last edited:
sh0ckw4ve said:
Thanks for answer. Prices in Poland are 10-15% higher on those sets you've posted, but I can still afford them. Take note, that I will be getting used PSU, which will cost around $25.

In the first config, you gave link to mobo without PCI slot - so adapter won't fit, but thats not a problem because there are many cheap H61 mobos, and some even have got native IDE ports. Also vid card with DDR2 is a waste, even for such a low price. I'd rather stick with HD2000 for a while then upgrade to something better.

The second set - I would get 1600Mhz RAM because AMD Fusion benefits from it(GPU is using system RAM so you get more FPS in games with better RAM clocks) and if money would allow, A6-3500.

I am concerned with power consumption and performance atm. It seems that Sandy Bridge with dedicated GPU consumes much more energy during full load. For example with HD 5870 it drains around 300W. I'm still researching on this and comparing to Llano.
Click to expand...
a 5870 is a STRONGER gpu than the igpu in a llano
thats why it uses more power

also. 1866 is the sweet spot for llanos apparently
 
sh0ckw4ve said:
I am interested in certain info not provided in reviews, Power consumption of fully loaded Llano rig with dual graphics combo and power consumption of Sandy Bridge rig with discrete graphics. Same with idle. Results could be interesting, as it will show overall chipset power saving performance.
Click to expand...

Maybe you are not looking at the right reviews? I don't know what you mean by "dual graphics combo", but here ya go:

Llano IGP power consumption
Sandy Bridge idle discrete GPU power consumption (subtract 10W for Llano)
Sandy Bridge load discrete GPU power consumption
 
Maybe you are not looking at the right reviews? I don't know what you mean by "dual graphics combo", but here ya go:
Click to expand...

Definitely, there are so many bad reviews and so few good ones. Thanks for the links, comparsion table is awesome. CPU bench G620 vs A-3650 is very very interesting. It seems that in games, during full load G620 with native H2000 vid card Intel CPU not only consumes less power but has also better performance. And better price. Now that is very interesting find.

About your question, dual graphics Fusion is when you connect discrete vid card to Fusion system and run both PCI-e 16x GPU and APU in mode similar to crossfire. WOrks only in Win7 // DX11.

Another thing which I want to compare is LLano power usage(no discrete vid card) vs Sandy Bridge power usage with discrete vid card of similar power to the one used in APU.
 
gmaster456 said:
Depends on the card.
Click to expand...

When talking about Fusion crossfire card - the one with similar performance to its native HD 6xxx. Think abaout two almost same cards running in SLI.

Sandy Bridge with discrete vid card - again similar performance to adequately priced AMD APU built-in vid card.
 
sh0ckw4ve said:
About your question, dual graphics Fusion is when you connect discrete vid card to Fusion system and run both PCI-e 16x GPU and APU in mode similar to crossfire. WOrks only in Win7 // DX11.
Click to expand...

The proper term for that is "Asymmetric Crossfire", and it's not very useful unless you have a very wimpy discrete GPU.

sh0ckw4ve said:
Another thing which I want to compare is LLano power usage(no discrete vid card) vs Sandy Bridge power usage with discrete vid card of similar power to the one used in APU.
Click to expand...

Something similar in performance (not power) is the Radeon 5570, though the 5570 is a good bit faster. The 5570's TDP is 39W, so the power consumption while gaming on the 2105 should be around 101W - 13W Intel IGP + 39W = 127W.
 
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