Hey Obsoleet,
I think the A10 is great. The computer I built is actually for gaming (yeah I know a lot of people will laugh) and I put the whole thing together for less than the price that some people are paying for a discreet video card!
They will laugh, especially here. Don't worry, they're idiot kids or immature adults (probably mostly the former, if not all of them). I'm with you though, it's the future and it's an inevitable future.
If it's 'fast enough', then I see no reason to wait. I'm a futurist and a pragmatist.
I was an early adopter of dropping the soundcard when most couldn't bear the thought of giving up their Soundblaster and the EAX gimmick. I'm also OK without math coprocessors and physics cards.
You gotta understand there's an asinine amount of paid and unpaid Nvidia people on this board, and just general fanboys. They do NOT want discrete cards to lose their popularity for as long as they can milk the cow. Obviously, I see the way the trend is going and now have more interest in Intel and AMD's integrated products. I could care less if it's Intel Inside or AMD Inside, but I definitely don't want an Nvidia inside my case.
Not to mention what you said about Crossfire working with the APU, and that Crossfire supports mixed mode cards to begin with.. that and the APU has caused me to write off an Nvidia purchase in the future. Too many advantages having AMD product all work together. Not to mention, to my understanding you can power 4 monitors just off your APU?? And it has the standard (excellent) Catalyst features like multiple monitor profiles.
I'm running with 2GB shared system memory (DDR3 1866MHz) which leaves the remainder of my system with 6GB to use.
So far I've been able to run everything I've wanted to, granted most of the things I'm buying/playing are older games. I have the computer hooked up to my TV and intend to run Big Picture (Steam) on it in the long run, then eventually...when it becomes necessary...run the APU Crossfire with an AMD HD 6670 card.
Right now, with just the APU (HD 7660D) @ stock speeds with 2GB ram allocated, at 720p resolution (which is what my TV supports), I'm running Crysis @ ~45fps medium settings and Fallout: New Vegas @ ~60fps medium settings (these are the only two I've tested so far, I plan on running a 3DMark test once all my Steam content finishes downloading).
I would definitely recommend this APU to anyone looking to save some $$ on a build, even if they are a gamer.
I guess I haven't looked into it as much as I should, but you can allocate any amount of memory to the APU? That's pretty interesting if true. Since most people are popping in at least 8GB and more.
It sounds good enough for me from the FPS you described. I'm going to have to look into how the APU + my 5870 work together in this case.
I run Steam in BigPicture mode as well.. I mostly play League of Legends and Killing Floor, among a few other games (I like older games as you do). I recommend picking up Castle Crashers during the Steam sale and Magicka. Both of those are pretty fun if you have the wireless Xbox360 gamepad for PC.
Thanks for the info.
I'd like to add, that your point about saving money shouldn't be lost on anyone. I have a lot of money. I just choose to not waste it. I buy for efficiency and bang for buck. It's tough to beat the bang for buck of the A10 IMO. With as fast as the pace moves in hardware, it's kind of silly to continually buy top end every few years. That said, people can do what they want. I want a nicely integrated machine like your A10 personally. When there's a huge APU advancement (and I think over time we'll see the APU/iGPU advancements start to improve the CPU side as well), I'll upgrade and sell or pass down the older hardware.. which will still be a slick rig for most.
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