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which option is the best to go with?

Z

ZanCrow

Member
go with an athlon 760k and add a r9 270 and overclock both. use a fm2/fm2+ motherboard and 3 years later , upgrade to an apu fm2+ and hybrid crossfire it with my r9 270.

or

go with an apu first ( a10-7850k , a8-7600 , a10-6800k ) and add 2400mhz (2x4gb) ram. use a fm2/fm2+ motherboard and 3 years later, change the apu.

consideration to take :

- i am perfectly fine with lowering settings.
- i play 1 hour a day ( not a big gamer )
- the games i play are RIFT, tribes : ascends, tf2, gmod, battlefield

things i would really like to know :
- do cpu chipset often change?
- how fast does ram speed technology advance?
 
No one can predict the future but generally speaking AMD has maintained backward compatibility longer and better than Intel, the BX motherboard being an exception.

3 years is long enough you might end up wanting a new MB with new features anyhow...

The r9 270 is going to destroy any APU based graphics.

The advantage of the APU is lower power consumption and smaller possible form factor. In a desktop you can't beat discrete!
 
lakedude said:
No one can predict the future but generally speaking AMD has maintained backward compatibility longer and better than Intel, the BX motherboard being an exception.

3 years is long enough you might end up wanting a new MB with new features anyhow...

The r9 270 is going to destroy any APU based graphics.

The advantage of the APU is lower power consumption and smaller possible form factor. In a desktop you can't beat discrete!
Click to expand...

does this mean i should go with the first option and add 2400mhz ram to it? so i can upgrade to an apu later?
 
Well I don't rightly know. Is there a reason you are only looking at those 2 options?

Getting an Intel based system with the R9-270 might be a better choice.

I vote for the R9-270 either way.
 
An APU is not an upgrade over discrete graphics like the R9-270.

I'll post some benchmarks in a minute.

Battlefield stresses a system pretty well BTW.
 
lakedude said:
Well I don't rightly know. Is there a reason you are only looking at those 2 options?

Getting an Intel based system with the R9-270 might be a better choice.

I vote for the R9-270 either way.
Click to expand...

well, theres no reason... but i know i shouldnt go with fx cpus cuz amd stopped them. here is my current build ( case, psu and hard drvie were already bought, (they should not affect performance anyways)) : http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/user/ZanCrow/saved/3h6L
 
CPU + discrete card if you're doing any gaming. You can get twice the performance for the same price. There's no reason at all to go APU if you know there's going to be gaming.
 
Sorry I'm having trouble finding a comparison between AMD APUs and the r9-270 because they are in such different performance classes that no one has directly compared the two.

The a10-7850k has r7 class graphics.
 
DominionSeraph said:
CPU + discrete card if you're doing any gaming. You can get twice the performance for the same price. There's no reason at all to go APU if you know there's going to be gaming.
Click to expand...

ok, i guess what you say is right, but would it be a good thing to apu + r9 270 crossfire in the future?
 
The a10-6800k evidently has 8670D graphics which score an 800 on Passmark's G3D test:

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+HD+8670D

While the r9-270 scores 4457 EDIT: whoops that was for the "x", the 270 scores 4216.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+R9+270X EDIT whoops wrong card.

Link to r9 270: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+R9+270

Still trying to find where the new a10 slots in, give me a minute...

Comparing the a10-7850k with the a10-6800 they are similar on many tests but on some the a10-7850k is up to twice as fast but that still does not touch half of what the r9-270 does.
 
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ZanCrow said:
ok, i guess what you say is right, but would it be a good thing to apu + r9 270 crossfire in the future?
Click to expand...

Not really. The APU is a little like using your feet or a bicycle wheel to help push a car going down the freeway. It might help a little but you are better off letting the video card do the graphics and focusing on pairing that r9-270 with the best CPU you can, and by best I mean the best CPU at CPU workloads not the CPU with the best built in graphics.
 
ZanCrow said:
ugh, ill have to change my mobo to a mobo that can be compatible with 2400mhz ram
Click to expand...
The r9 270 has 2GB of 5.6GHz (effective frequency) GDDR5 (fast memory) which eliminates the need for super fast RAM to be installed on the motherboard.

You only really "need" the faster RAM if you are running an APU because the APU graphics core does not have 2GB of its own 5.6GHz (effective frequency) GDDR5. The APU graphics core uses system RAM. The fast RAM is for the graphics, the CPU does not need 2400mhz RAM.
 
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lakedude said:
The r9 270 has 2GB of 5.6GHz GDDR5 (fast memory) which eliminates the need for super fast RAM to be installed on the motherboard.

You only really "need" the faster RAM if you are running an APU (because the APU graphics does not have 2GB of its own 5.6GHz GDDR5 and uses system RAM). The fast RAM is for the graphics, the CPU does not need 2400mhz RAM.
Click to expand...

ok, i guess youre right but i will still get 2400mhz ram for futureproofness and maybe i will cahgne idea in future if apus get a BIG boost :whiste:
 
lakedude said:
The r9 270 has 2GB of 5.6GHz GDDR5 (fast memory) which eliminates the need for super fast RAM to be installed on the motherboard.

You only really "need" the faster RAM if you are running an APU (because the APU graphics does not have 2GB of its own 5.6GHz GDDR5 and uses system RAM). The fast RAM is for the graphics, the CPU does not need 2400mhz RAM.
Click to expand...
The proper units for the 5.6 number is GB/s(gigabytes per second), and measure of data bandwidth.

That number is derived by multiplying the memory clock(in MHz) by some number derived from the RAM timings(not sure of the exact units).
 
ZanCrow said:
ok, i guess youre right but i will still get 2400mhz ram for futureproofness and maybe i will cahgne idea in future if apus get a BIG boost :whiste:
Click to expand...

There's just no point. By the time performance increases we'll be on a new socket with DDR4. And when it comes time to upgrade your gaming, guess what? You're going to want to upgrade to a new CPU + discrete card, not an APU.
 
Your build looks pretty nice as is. I really like the 212 cooler and the r9-270. The case and power supply are fine.

I've personally had trouble with Corsair Vengeance RAM but hopefully you won't.

The only changes you might look into are going Intel i5 based system or getting an SSD. Only problem is both will up your budget. You could tone the RAM down a bit and save some money.

Funny your parts list says the memory is $75 but when you click on it you come up with $123.48!
 
Torn Mind said:
The proper units for the 5.6 number is GB/s(gigabytes per second), and measure of data bandwidth.

That number is derived by multiplying the memory clock(in MHz) by some number derived from the RAM timings(not sure of the exact units).
Click to expand...
Oh, sorry. That was just a copy/paste job. Let me know what it should be and I'll change it.

Point remains the same. Discrete cards have their own high speed RAM.
 
GPU processing power is partly determined by how quickly the cores themselves perform operations and how quickly data can get to those cores(vram bandwidth). The R9 270 has 1280 stream processors, for one, which is more than double the count on the A10-7850K.

DDR3 will be obsoleted by DDR4 or some GDDR5 implementation that manages to work with the CPU. They will provide more bandwidth than the 800 Mhz boost from DDR3-1600 Mhz. And note that the gains will be only for integrated graphics, as discrete cards use their own dedicated memory. I would speculate later generation APUs will implement memory based on those standards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_bandwidth#Bandwidth_computation_and_nomenclature

1,200,000,000 clocks per second*2 lines per clock*64 bits per line*2 interfaces = 30.72 GB/s
This is the theoretical maximum, and might not be sustainable in real world usage.
 
lakedude said:
Oh, sorry. That was just a copy/paste job. Let me know what it should be and I'll change it.

Point remains the same. Discrete cards have their own high speed RAM.
Click to expand...

"Ram with 5.6 GB/s of bandwidth", not "5.6 GHz GDDR5". Memclocks are probably at 1200 Mhz or something.
 
why 2400mhz ram? if budget conscious, expensive ram makes no sense, since 1866 or even 1600mhz performs nearly identical.
 
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