AMD Athlon X4 760k Black Edition or FX4300

[MrNeil]

Small build for my youngest boy gaming computer !

This will play Arma 2 ,BF3 and BF4...They seem very close with the 760k being a much more newer chip with a FM2 or FM2+ board. Im also tempted to get a new AM3+ board for myself and give my old board for the FX4300

I'm very temted to go for the FX but some feedback as always from you Nexus matey's is a great help

Many thanks !

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

BF3 and BF4 are reasonably multi-threaded,but ARMA 2 really only pushes one thread,so might do better on an Intel chip.

The decent overclocking 970 motherboards are now as cheap as £62,so maybe get your son an FX6300 too with you current motherboard.

[scaryjim]

Probably the biggest difference is that the FX4300 has L3 cache, which games used to like. I've not seen many comparisons of gaming performance with and without L3 cache recently, though.

As CAT says, the absolute best option would probably be an FX6300 if you could stretch the budget. OTOH do you already have a graphics card for the build? If not might a higher end APU do the job without the need for discrete graphics?

[MrNeil]

i did think about a FX6300 which my oldest boy and myself have but i also did think about the newish FM2+ socket ..But having a separate card would be better i think or maybe go crossfire with the APU ?

[Bonebreaker777]

Dedicated GPU > IGP crossfire (and for some respective performance the IPG needs fast RAM purchased or overclocked).
FX6300 + HD7770/7850 or their refreshed equivalents would be pretty good (maybe even nVidia 750 Ti).

[scaryjim]

Dedicated GPU > IGP crossfire (and for some respective performance the IPG needs fast RAM purchased or overclocked).

TBH, I've yet to see a convincing demonstration of that for components of the same overall price. Sure a CPU + £120 750 Ti is going to be faster, but it's also going to cost more. The A10 5800k is down to £75 now, and that's basically an X4 760k, plus a passable gaming GPU for next to nothing (I game on an A10 4600M which handles a lot of games at moderate detail). OTOH AMD have never been very forthcoming about what GPUs you can add in dual graphics. What actually makes a good recommendation is really down to what the OP's budget is and what settings the targeted young gamer is happy with My stepson used to play Skyrim on minimum settings at ~ 7FPS and was happy enough with that (although you should've seen his face when I finally upgraded that rig ), so an APU on its own might easily be enough to keep a kid happy playing those games at lowest detail.

[DanceswithUnix]

Biggest plus point of the AM3+ platform is that if you ever feel the need you can upgrade to an 8350, which is still by far the fastest mainline (ie not 220W requiring an costly motherboard) chip that AMD do and probably will be for a couple of years.

I quite like to be able to swap stuff about between machines too. When I got the 8350 my son got my old 955BE as an upgrade. Sounds like you already have am3 a plenty.

So if you are trying to stick to a tight budget then socket FM2+ is probably your friend. My last build was FM2+ motherboard with an FM2 cpu. I have learnt not to skimp on motherboards, so overall the build wasn't that cheap, but that was for a home server so I wanted the low idle power.