Cheap upgrade for my 4 year old OCed computer?

[inf64]

The A8 has a 20% clock speed advantage, so on average it's actually slower per clock, but clocks higher.

Nobody said it's faster per clock. What matters is aggregate performance and there it wins. You can OC 3850 to 3.6-3.7Ghz on air(that's the most common range). On the other hand ,new Trinity chip will be faster (stock vs stock) than 3850 and will OC sky high (think 4.5-4.8Ghz on air with little effort). Both chips will therefore have almost equal gain(percentage wise) when you OC them,versus their stock clocks-around 25%. Trinity will also have higher IPC versus Bulldozer so it's an improvement in that area too. It won't be earth shattering but think 8-10% higher IPC than "old" FX.

 

[AtenRa]

Are you joking???? OP, dont listen to this. If you have to get a new MB and CPU, which you probably dont, definitely go Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge quad.

It seams that you dont know what you are talking about, A10-5800 will be faster both in CPU and GPU than Q6600 and 8800 GT 512. He can sell his Mobo+CPU+Ram+GPU and get a FM2 mobo+CPU+ DDR-3 Ram and have a nice upgrade for everyday use and Gaming with much much much lower power consumption, or we dont care about power consumption anymore ???

That trinity at stock will barely be faster than your OC Core 2 quad. Yea, you could overclock it, but you can also overclock a SB processor and have far better performance.

Im sure you are familiar with the Intel crap low budget CPUs than cant be OCed. OP asked for a cheap upgrade and at the price the Trinity seams to be the best choice if he can sell the old hardware.

Im sure Core i7 3930K is faster but it cost 6x more without the GPU and mobo.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Why would he buy an inferiour and outdated tech? Much cheaper lowend SBs and IBs that uses much less power and is much faster.

And Trinity GPU beating 8800GT in games? Hah, only in your dreams.

Not to mention you cant buy that AMD CPU or board yet at Newegg etc.

 

[Yuriman]

I'm not certain but I think Trinity's GPU is actually roughly as fast as an 8800gt, so it's really not much of an upgrade, if any. When I get home I'll look for some CPU benchmarks, as I'm really not too familiar with Trinity's performance. I do know that overall, a stock Sandy Bridge i3 is fairly competitive in threaded tasks with a Q6600 @3ghz.

 

[AtenRa]

Why would he buy an inferiour and outdated tech? Much cheaper lowend SBs and IBs that uses much less power and is much faster.

You should ask your self the same question, why buy an inferior and outdated Intel CPU like Celeron and Pentium instead of Trinity A10-5800??

Celeron and Pentium are even slower than Llano
Celeron and Pentium doesn't have Quick Sunc
Celeron and Pentium doesn't have AES
Celeron and Pentium doesn't have AVX
Celeron and Pentium doesn't have Turbo Boost
Celeron and Pentium only have dual core no HT

vs Trinity A10-5800

It has AVX
It has AES
It has four(4) Cores
It has Turbo Core
It can be Overclocked, both CPU and iGPU
It can CrossFire with a Discrete GPU
It has superior Graphics Performance

 

[inf64]

And it has VERY competitive price and cheap motherboards. The only downside to A10 for desktop is that it hasn't launched yet . It will soon though,in couple of weeks time.

 

[SPBHM]

I don't understand why you guys are talking about APUs...
he already have a 8800GT, which is faster than the APUs in many (or most) occasions,
and his CPU is not massively slower (at least compared to llano), so clearly, the best way to improve gaming performance is not by buying an APU for his case.

go for a faster VGA.

 

[Smartazz]

I don't understand why you guys are talking about APUs...
he already have a 8800GT, which is faster than the APUs in many (or most) occasions,
and his CPU is not massively slower (at least compared to llano), so clearly, the best way to improve gaming performance is not by buying an APU for his case.

go for a faster VGA.

Agreed. Getting an APU wouldn't be a huge upgrade and would cost a considerable amount of money.

 

[mikeymikec]

I'm not going to say that A8-3850 is a stellar performer by today's standards ,but have you even bothered to look at the results you have listed?

Yes, that's why I posted it. He just uses the desktop for gaming, and where the AMD CPU is in front (not always, which isn't a bad start), the biggest difference in favour of the AMD CPU is only 13FPS. I don't know about you, but the day I spend a hundred quid or more for the sake of about 10FPS is the day I want to be committed to an asylum.

The only exception I can think of to that rule would be going from frame rates of less than 20 on a game I really, really like. And I would still think twice if the gains weren't consistent across the board.

If I'm going to spend a significant amount of money (100UKP) to improve performance I want to see visible, consistent performance gains. Why the hell would I spend money if I don't get an appreciable return for it, so I can say "oooh, shiny hardware!"?

Admittedly I wouldn't use the anandtech bench system (as it lacks readings like average FPS and maximum frame wait time), as the ideal method of comparison but in this case it is pretty much necessary. From those readings though, the A8 looks like a useless upgrade from a Q6600, and an extra thing to bear in mind is that the OP's system has an OC'd Q6600, so it should perform better than the anandtech readings state.

 

[Jacky60]

I'd get 4gb ram secondhand if possible as you won't keep it for long and upgrade gfx card will be the biggest difference you'll see if you must uipgrade now.

 

[frozentundra123456]

It seams that you dont know what you are talking about, A10-5800 will be faster both in CPU and GPU than Q6600 and 8800 GT 512. He can sell his Mobo+CPU+Ram+GPU and get a FM2 mobo+CPU+ DDR-3 Ram and have a nice upgrade for everyday use and Gaming with much much much lower power consumption, or we dont care about power consumption anymore ???



Im sure you are familiar with the Intel crap low budget CPUs than cant be OCed. OP asked for a cheap upgrade and at the price the Trinity seams to be the best choice if he can sell the old hardware.

Im sure Core i7 3930K is faster but it cost 6x more without the GPU and mobo.

It seems that you insist of promoting AMD no matter what. Either you did not read my post carefully, or you are simply ignoring it so you can continue to spout pro AMD propoganda. The point was that the A-10 will be a minimal upgrade from the OPs current system. And it is highly ironic that a fan of the most power inefficient chip on the market (Bulldozer) suddenly starts touting power savings when it comes at the expense of performance vs the i5 plus discrete GPU that I was suggesting. I highly doubt the igpu of A10 will even match, much less beat a 9800GT, since it is going to be bandwidth and TDP limited.

OP, I will summarize my recommendation again to hopefully eliminate the obfuscation introduced here.

As I and other posters already stated, I would upgrade the video card and see how the game plays. If you sell your current system, get an intel i5 and a discrete video card. It might use 100 watts more power than the APU alone, but will offer vastly superior performance. If you were to buy the A10, you would have to add a discrete video card immediately to improve performance over what you have, which defeats the purpose of buying an APU in the first place. An A10 MIGHT make sense (if the price is right) for someone who only wants to do light gaming and is moving up from less powerful integrated graphics.

It makes absolutely no sense as an "upgrade" for someone with a system like yours.

Edit: Oh, and Aten, I see you are using the old AMD trick of using the price of the most expensive Intel CPU for price comparison. Classy move, when an i5 that will be nearly a fast in current games costs less than 200.00.

 

[Mallibu]

Spending money to get an APU to have the same performance (+5-10%?) you have now, with lower power consumption does not make sense. Get a better GPU for start and then you can start saving for an i5 ivy bridge upgrade.

 

[Smartazz]

Spending money to get an APU to have the same performance (+5-10%?) you have now, with lower power consumption does not make sense. Get a better GPU for start and then you can start saving for an i5 ivy bridge upgrade.

Or even get Haswell.

 

[ShintaiDK]

You should ask your self the same question, why buy an inferior and outdated Intel CPU like Celeron and Pentium instead of Trinity A10-5800??

Celeron and Pentium are even slower than Llano
Celeron and Pentium doesn't have Quick Sunc
Celeron and Pentium doesn't have AES
Celeron and Pentium doesn't have AVX
Celeron and Pentium doesn't have Turbo Boost
Celeron and Pentium only have dual core no HT

vs Trinity A10-5800

It has AVX
It has AES
It has four(4) Cores
It has Turbo Core
It can be Overclocked, both CPU and iGPU
It can CrossFire with a Discrete GPU
It has superior Graphics Performance

Your post is so full of errors it hurts. Not to mention I doubt the A10-5800 will sell for 64$ or below when it comes for sales...sometime.

 

[AtenRa]

Its not the best benchmark but it really shows the difference in performance in newer applications/games between the Q6600 + 8800GT vs A8-3850

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dmv/3772578/3dmv/2758099

Trinity will only add to that

 

[SPBHM]

Its not the best benchmark but it really shows the difference in performance in newer applications/games between the Q6600 + 8800GT vs A8-3850

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dmv/3772578/3dmv/2758099

Trinity will only add to that

about the link, there is some bug/problem, how would you even post something like that!? I would be ashamed.

Graphics Score
17282.11

for the a8 3850, they are clearly not using the same VGA or settings,

and you are ignoring the overclock,
q6600 comes at 2.4GHz, 9x266, alsmot everyone can set the FSB to 333 and it becomes a 3GHz CPU (without any overvolt in most cases), so it becomes exactly a "qx6850",



this review includes the Q6600 (stock) and the qx6850 (=q6600 3GHz)
and other CPUs, unfortunately no A8,
but I know from other tests that the a8 3850 is normally clearly behind a Phenom II X4 955/945
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/778-10/crysis.html


about video performance,
here is the APU (llano) on vantage

stock and 3.8GHz/800MHz

now a overclocked 8800GT

here a 8800GT stock

(ignore the CPU score, this was made using GPU accelerated PhysX)

CPU is not comparable, but from my experience kentsfield (playing around with a kentsfield Xeon few months ago) at 3GHz scores more than 10k

so OCed APU = 4233, OCed 8800GT = 6295
stock APU = 3501, stock 8800GT = 5330

as for the CPU score q6600 3GHz = 11100
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB4L5KBYmOo#t=07m08s
3.8GHz APU = 12200

so yes, going for llano would be a terrible decision, going for trinity probably to.
again, the results I provided are not perfect (variation in drivers, 3dm versions, and sources) but better than what you provided.

if you want the source of the pics, just copy and paste the address on Google and it should work.

 

[AtenRa]

yeap, now that i look at it again it seams there is something wrong.

Ill try bench my 3870K and post the results here.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

yeap, now that i look at it again it seams there is something wrong.

For the Radeon HD 6550D, it says "Driver Name: NVIDIA Geforce 8800 GT". So that comparison is actually between an 8800 GT and ... an 8800 GT....? So that's really the performance difference between the A8-3850 CPU and the Q6600?

 

[sm625]

As long as you dont run anything else besides that game, 2GB will probably be enough.

 

[exar333]

Spend $120; $20 for 2GB more RAM and $100 on the best GPU you can buy (7750?). Don't bother with side-grading to a crappy A8 or A10 setup which is even more $$$.

This would get you by until you go for a whole-new build. Remember that you can sell the Q6600 CPU for $75-100 alone, and probably get your $$$ back for the DDR2 as well. You could keep or sell the GPU.

Edit: Sometimes I have to check the URL at the top of the page to make sure I am not on AMDZone lately...:'(

 

[SPBHM]

For the Radeon HD 6550D, it says "Driver Name: NVIDIA Geforce 8800 GT". So that comparison is actually between an 8800 GT and ... an 8800 GT....? So that's really the performance difference between the A8-3850 CPU and the Q6600?

it's a mess,
the score is just unreal for a single 8800GT or 6550D, the screenshots I posted are what you can expect from these parts....

 

[wilson0416]

Technology make us want to spend money!

 

[Kolath]

So it turns out XCOM does not run on Window XP... so... I guess it's upgrade time after all because 2 GB RAM is not going to cut it on windows 7.

 

[Shawn]

Ram and SSD

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I've got a Q9650, Asus MB & 8GB ram I could sell you.