CPU (Should I go with the AMD A4 or AMD A6?)

[bononos]

Way too many choices

If you are not into gaming at all since you already have another rig for gaming, why even bother with the Trinitys? Get an i3.

 

[TheReaWarmonger]

Well the Phenom II 965 + GPU is roughly the same cost as A8-5600K. Any ~$50 AM3+ motherboard you get is unlikely to be able to support a FX 83xx nor it's successors. Where as the FM2 board for the A8 has a very high probability of supporting Kaveri.

If you have narrowed the field to AMD, I see the A8 as the best pick. You have the option to undervolt or overclock, since it's not your main PC you can even lower the iGPU settings to give the CPU more leeway.

I don't see how a 965 BE is roughly the same price as 5600k. We're talking $85 compared to $110, that's a $25 difference which goes a long way on such a tight budget. The 965 BE at stock clocks pretty much tops the 5600k in both single and multi threaded performance in most cases. I don't see how you could go wrong with four true stars cores. As for the motherboard, it's rock solid and can hold all CPU's up to 125W TDP. So don't expect to overclock on it, but it will run a 965 BE. Being AM3+ and SATA3 ready, it leaves a lot of room for upgradability. This was the main reason I sent back my 960G+ for the A880GZ. If he ever decides to put a SSD into the machine, he can reap performance benefits of in excess of 500 MB/s when running a SATA3 SSD. That makes a huge difference in terms of productivity being a software developer (less time waiting while holding onto a thought). Plus I am certain if Steamroller releases on the AM3+ package, this board gets bios updates regularly for new CPU's. Tho in all honesty, what it boils down to is the 965 BE is going to offer him the best performance to price ratio. A i3 will offer superior single thread performance, but cannot match the 965 BE in thread heavy workloads (at the same price). The future of software is threaded, so even if the machine grows to be 5+ years old. Even later software will run seamlessly on it. A i3 would be nice, but at the price point. It would kill all of the other hardware quality in his rig.

Phenom II 965 BE
LG GH24NS95
BIOSTAR A880GZ
Rosewill CHALLENGER

Subtotal: $222.96

EMCXRXT25 Discount From Promo Code -$3.00
EMCXSTX36 Discount From Promo Code -$10.00
EMCXRXT55 Discount From Promo Code -$10.00

Shipping: $0.00
Grand Total: $199.96

 

[grimpr]

A quadcore A8 AMD APU or an Intel dualcore with SSD, there's no other reasonable choise, no need to drag it further.

 

[P1NKY]

Pentium or Celeron or Core 2 Duo?

 

[Centauri]

...are you trolling us?

 

[Cerb]

...are you trolling us?

Possibly. I'm treating this thread kind of like a certain very long one over in the video section, at this point. I would have had a computer in the mail, myself, as soon as the 24h free shipping deal hit at Geeks. Or, if not, some set of parts (I've done a lot more than the OP needs to, on a C2D 3.2 w/ 8GB RAM, and custom-compiling Qt and Pyside has been the only thing to really annoy me, so I'd rather have saved $50-70 with a nice little office box, than get a newer quad, or anything else--or, maybe put it into a 64GB SSD).

 

[TheReaWarmonger]

...are you trolling us?

I was going to post that this thread was a lost cause a while ago, was giving PINKY the benefit of the doubt tho. :whiste:

 

[Blandge]

CIS 402 Computer Programming

Computer programming is a 400 level class... wat

 

[Centauri]

I was going to post that this thread was a lost cause a while ago, was giving PINKY the benefit of the doubt tho. :whiste:

I did it on page 3, then grimpr replied with how much fun this all is.

 

[P1NKY]

No troll. Deciding if I want to build or go to Florida.

 

[Bean7]

my friend use A6 and it's quite good

 

[Headfoot]

No troll. Deciding if I want to build or go to Florida.

Give it a break. You're trolling