AMD build?

[Psittac]

I used to be an amd fanboy back in the Athlon days, had an amd barton xp-m that I clocked to high heaven. I know back in those days the difference between the two was basically that the amd had a larger L1 cache and the intel had a larger L2 cache, this meant that the amd was snappier but when it came to raw computing power the intel won out.

Could someone sum up the differences these days?

I'm going to build my friend a new desktop and keep it as cheap as possible while upholding a certain level. I want at least quad core and 8g of ram. No overclocking will be done unless it's easy to do on stock equipment (not likely)

The cpu I have picked out for him is this

AMD FX-6100 Zambezi.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103962

I just picked a random atx motherboard and went with a brand that is supposed to be good (never owned one but heard good things)

MSI 970A-G43 AM3+
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130679

And for ram I think i'll give him my 8g of 1600 ram and get myself a small upgrade in the process for a few bucks. The ram is 2x4g of ddr3 cas11 and I can't remember the brand.

PSU is a corsair builder 500w, same psu I have on my machine and it works great
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139027

he already has a ssd that's only sata1 and only 60g but that'll have to do for now.

I haven't built an amd machine in 9 years and since that one I didn't do much research, just kind of threw them together so you could say i'm not up to date on either intel or amd.

Any thoughts or suggestions on this build? I don't want to go any higher on the budget.

 

[azanimefan]

I used to be an amd fanboy back in the Athlon days, had an amd barton xp-m that I clocked to high heaven. I know back in those days the difference between the two was basically that the amd had a larger L1 cache and the intel had a larger L2 cache, this meant that the amd was snappier but when it came to raw computing power the intel won out.

Could someone sum up the differences these days?

Loaded question. lets see...

1) intel chips are much faster (20%-40%) in single threaded (read single core) aps. Don't go by GHz... it's pointless to compare outside of chip families. Generally intel chips are about 3-4 years ahead of the best AMD has.

2) you pay for that performance, generally speaking intel CPUs and MBs are a bit pricier then AMD... particularly the MBs, where you generally have to pay as much as 50% more for similar features on an intel board... so much so you can have solid arguments over which chips are the better values, and which give you the most bang for the buck.

3) in multithreaded apps (programs that use multiple cores) intel's tremendous performance advantage withers away... particularly since Hyperthreading and 4 cores is a poor substitute for 6 or even 8 cores like the higher end FX chips sport. This structural design difference makes AMD chips about equal to far more expensive intel chips in specific situations. And with the advent of more and more games which take advantage of multicores the intel gaming advantage is also shrinking a bit

-that said, intel is the 500 pound gorilla in the room.

I'm going to build my friend a new desktop and keep it as cheap as possible while upholding a certain level. I want at least quad core and 8g of ram. No overclocking will be done unless it's easy to do on stock equipment (not likely)

The cpu I have picked out for him is this

AMD FX-6100 Zambezi.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103962

I just picked a random atx motherboard and went with a brand that is supposed to be good (never owned one but heard good things)

MSI 970A-G43 AM3+
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130679

And for ram I think i'll give him my 8g of 1600 ram and get myself a small upgrade in the process for a few bucks. The ram is 2x4g of ddr3 cas11 and I can't remember the brand.

PSU is a corsair builder 500w, same psu I have on my machine and it works great
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139027

he already has a ssd that's only sata1 and only 60g but that'll have to do for now.

I haven't built an amd machine in 9 years and since that one I didn't do much research, just kind of threw them together so you could say i'm not up to date on either intel or amd.

Any thoughts or suggestions on this build? I don't want to go any higher on the budget.

mmmm... what about GPU? what are you using this pc for? gaming? web browsing?

I gotta say the steamroller cpu structure of the first gen FX chips was a pretty disappointing chip. Generally if you want a 4-6 core cpu i'd suggest something from the 2nd gen at least like a fx 6300. that still doesn't take care of your gpu...

which leads us to the suggestion of an APU.

have you looked at the A10-5800k? That might just be what you're looking for at that budget.

 

[trents]

What will your friend be using the system to do mainly? Casual computing? Games? Photoshop? Audio video editing and compiling? CAD? Intel and AMD CPUs have different strengths and weaknesses in relation to performanc vs. value depending on the type of computing to be done.

What is his budget for this build?

 

[Heater]

As the others have said what is the planned use for this machine? Most new games do well on the higher end fx, and if you use any high threaded programs they will do great as well. Since the new ps4 uses an 8 core AMD chip i think we will see much better ports that utilize high core counts, but this will be awhile off.

That being said there are a few things to remember.
1. Stay away from first gen FX chips (Zambezi). Piledriver has better per core performance and is the newer tech.

2. Im not as sure on the 6XXX chips, but with the 8 core you really need a soild mb to do any clocking. These things almost need a dedicated breaker in your house. They pull ALOT of power and cheap boards will not cope. My ASrock 990fx extreme 4 (4-1 phase) will throttle the cpu at anything over 4.0ghz as the VRMs get hot fast.

3. Again not 100% on the 6 cores, but they throw off alot of heat, for any OCing you need a great cooler, and to push it water is a must.

Let us know what the use of this machine will be, AMD's FX are great processors but are not best for every build as they have some downfalls. A I5 and z77 board can be had for a great price and depending on the workload will beat AMD. Haswell is not far off either so keep your options open.

 

[Wipeout]

Good call Heater.Let my add my 2 cents.Your right on point not to use the first generation of fx cpu's.The 6100 is 120 dollars.Up his budget another 20 dollars and get a FX6300.Another thing,Stop reading my mind! An i5 and a z77 board is my next upgrade...I'm a huge amd fan,but Intel makes better motherboards and chip-sets.By the way,sweet oc on your 8350.

Sorry to get off topic here,but I noticed you have a ASRock z77 Extreme4 .Doesn't that board have a 4+1 power phase.On the AMD side,the highest power phase is 8+2.I see alot of Asrock boards specifically,on the Intel side that offer 12+2,8+4,8+2 ect..Wouldn't this be a consideration for a better overclock.

 

[Psittac]

This PC won't really be used for much, he's blind so doesn't need a gpu, I completely forgot to make sure there was an apu and assumed amd did the same thing as intel and just made the onboard graphics standard with the chip. Once I get everything installed it will display nothing but I would imagine there still needs to be a video source even if it isn't being used.

With that in mind he really isn't going to be doing anything intensive at all, all he does is web browse, mud, listen to music and Netflix.

I guess the most important thing is a highly responsive computer. The only other thing to consider is that it runs a screen reader named jaws from freedom scientific, and he has the speed turned way up to levels where I don't understand a thing it says.

edit: overclocking doesn't need to be done at all, just a stock system will be fine because if you start to up the mb and the cooling that'll put the price to high

thanks for all the replies, I appreciate it.

 

[Wipeout]

edit: overclocking doesn't need to be done at all, just a stock system will be fine because if you start to up the mb and the cooling that'll put the price to high

The 6300 is 95watts,and at stock speeds this cpu will run very cool.Heck,you could use the stock hs,and this would work fine. When using programs like Hardware Monitor,your idle temps will not be accurate.No worry,load temps will be very accurate.Just FYI. One other side note,using AMD overdrive is another story.Idle temps are very accurate.You can cross-reference bios temps to confirm.

 

[Johan45]

It doesn't look like he needs anything too fancy just cheap .

How about something like this.


Plus a hundred bucks for an OS and it's very reasonable.

 

[trents]

Personally, I believe the new Trinity APUs recently turned out by AMD are the smartest choice for the average computer user, i.e., someone who is not a hard core computer gamer. The APUs are fairly potent CPUs that don't cost much - lots of bang for the buck. And if this is not a system that will be overclocked you won't have to get a super whoopy motherboard. The main thing to focus on if he wants a snappy computer is to get fairly fast ram and plenty of it so there is very little reading/writing to disc, the slowest part of computing. The APUs are clearly where AMD is now pouring most of their energy and resources and where they can still compete with Intel - and AMD's acquisition of ATI really gives them an edge in this sector of CPU development.

 

[RGone]

You guys need to see that he wrote he needs configuration with ONboard graphics. 9xx chipset boards do not have onboard graphics. The person he is building for is 'blind' and only needs onboard graphics. So hiis build as listed will not have onboard graphics at all. He needs AMD APU mobo setup.
RGone...

EDIT:
Way to jump in 'trents' and 'Johan45'.
END EDIT.

 

[Psittac]

I would imagine that I could get just any cheap gpu if it makes more sense that way to get a better pc, but I really like that bundle you posted johan. The only reason I don't want to go with one of those bundles is that I want to upgrade my own ram in the process and give him mine, I guess that could be ignored if i'm getting basically a whole pc without a hdd or os for the same price. I would kind of like to get him a quad core because all of his friends have quad core pc's. I don't know how much of that he'll use but I think he'll feel bad if he goes to another dual core.

he currently has my previous pc, a Pentium 820d with 4g ddr2, I want a substantial upgrade to that, not sure what a newer dual core would be.

 

[Psittac]

I just had an idea, since what he needs isn't really cpu power but fast response, what about a dual core apu with a proper ssd? sata6g?

That would keep me around the same current budget and probably give him a more usefull pc.

 

[Psittac]

ok new build and I think this will be blistering fast

APU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103942
MB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157278
RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145324
SSD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227726
PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139026

I have a case and figure the 430w psu will do fine since it's not OC and no gpu, I'll figure out an OS probably windows 7 64-bit

price $367.43 with shipping

 

[Johan45]

For the cpu I'd go with the trinity over the llano it's a bit more but alot better everything else was fine and it's $30 more

 

[Psittac]

ok cool thanks, i'll keep that in mind, i'm still trying to sort things out on this so I might not build it for a bit

 

[azanimefan]

the a10-5800k is a rather powerful CPU... one of the better quad cores that AMD puts out. AMD really is in love with their APUs. They seem to be putting most of their R&D toward them.

Right now you can get an A10 and on the same chip get nearly the single app performance of an i3, a true quad core cpu, and a GPU around the level of a HD 6670. You should see the benches... there really isn't a CPU out there that can play in the same playing field when you're looking at a system with an integrated GPU.

In some ways this might be TOO much gpu for your needs. But the price will be right... and having seen these apus in action, i can assure you, this is a great little workhorse.