AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

WoW is one of those games (Half Life 2 is another) where you can play it quite happily on underpowered hardware and the game will do an impressive job as giving you something worth playing. It is a very different game to the one players with high end kit are playing though.

I have known people raid on laptops with (old) Intel integrated graphics. Personally, I couldn't play like that and consider my 955BE quad core and GT460 to be a bit better than the minimum. Perhaps I need more skill

I advice you get a Core i5 2500K running at 5GHZ and a GTX680 or HD7970 overclocked to 1200MHZ+ to run the game at 1680X1050 on the highest settings. 1920X1080 might be doable on medium.

[KeyboardDemon]

It depends on the launch price. The lower end models will be cheaper and probably will overclock to a similar level. TBH,the six core version is probably go to be the best mix of lightly threaded and multi-threaded processing power for games IMHO.

A bottleneck is only a real world bottleneck when it affects what you are doing.

A lot of the times geeks/nerds are always measurebating their systems,

AMD seems to be working quite closely with Adobe too,as the Trinity IGP has been certified for use with CS6. So FX8350 might end being a good choice,depending on the price.

I based my estimation of £200 on the current price of the FX8150 with the closed loop water cooler, I'm not really expecting the price to be very far off that, I would be surprised if it goes beyond £250.

You're right about bottlenecks, but part of me does just want to get the upgrade, the same part of me that prompted me to get an AM3+ mobo long before the FX8150 launched, though I had to get a mobo anyway as an unfortunate temper related incident that cause physical damage to my previous mobo rendered the PC unusable! (Don't ask!) But if for any reason the FX8350 fails to deliver to a level that I am not even remotely excited about then I will most likely stick to me current set up.

KeyboardDemon, you sound like you want to upgrade to take on this new work?

Yeah, I do, and I know I'm using my wife's business as an excuse, I'll be fine so long as she doesn't find out!, and the truth is should I get the upgrade I will have more than a few happy weeks of measurebating (thanks for that word cat) till I achieve a massive nerdgasm or I am close to going blind!

I really hope your wife gets enough success for you to be PC limited at times, but if that is the case it seems to me that you would need a second PC to help with that, as overall that would get you a doubling in performance compared to you current single PC. If you look at modern upgrades, then whilst people use words like "slaughter" when comparing CPUs when you look at the graph they are really only talking about 20% better at most.

Thanks for that, I hope so too. We are not really that PC limited at the moment, there are four PCs that I've built two based around 965BE CPUs, an AM2 and a Core 2 6600 plus two laptops, but with only two of us, we don't have the manpower to use them all at once.

Another point to consider is that whilst right now there may not be a big difference between X4 and the FX, the new instructions in the FX should start getting used at some point and that will make if faster. That isn't a certainty (it may take too long to happen to really matter) but if all else is equal it would push me that way.

That's a good point.

BTW,have you tried this custom high resolution texture pack for Crysis2:

I have tried it, but I think I had an earlier version, this one seems to have a few more tweaks to it, so I might try it again at some point so I can go back to pick a few missing souvenirs and traffic cameras etc...

I advice you get a Core i5 2500K running at 5GHZ and a GTX680 or HD7970 overclocked to 1200MHZ+ to run the game at 1680X1050 on the highest settings. 1920X1080 might be doable on medium.

OMG that's such poor advice, I'm shocked at you Cat. How would you expect anyone get a good gaming experience with a rig like that at medium without at least 2x overclocked Asus Mars III cards. Seriously, you're such an optimist.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I based my estimation of £200 on the current price of the FX8150 with the closed loop water cooler, I'm not really expecting the price to be very far off that, I would be surprised if it goes beyond £250.

You're right about bottlenecks, but part of me does just want to get the upgrade, the same part of me that prompted me to get an AM3+ mobo long before the FX8150 launched, though I had to get a mobo anyway as an unfortunate temper related incident that cause physical damage to my previous mobo rendered the PC unusable! (Don't ask!) But if for any reason the FX8350 fails to deliver to a level that I am not even remotely excited about then I will most likely stick to me current set up.

I know the feeling about the upgrade bug. However,like you I like large performance increases if possible,so I am prepared to wait for upgrades.

Yeah, I do, and I know I'm using my wife's business as an excuse, I'll be fine so long as she doesn't find out!, and the truth is should I get the upgrade I will have more than a few happy weeks of measurebating (thanks for that word cat) till I achieve a massive nerdgasm or I am close to going blind!

I saw the term mentioned on the website of a photographer called Ken Rockwell. The internet hates that chap,but he is fun to read.

I have tried it, but I think I had an earlier version, this one seems to have a few more tweaks to it, so I might try it again at some point so I can go back to pick a few missing souvenirs and traffic cameras etc...

I was actually more impressed with it(despite some bugs) than the official pack. Hopefully,Crysis3 will be better.

OMG that's such poor advice, I'm shocked at you Cat. How would expect anyone get a good gaming experience with a rig like that at medium without at least 2x overclocked Asus Mars III cards. Seriously, you're such an optimist.

I have been rumbled!!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Here is a comparison of the 65W TDP A10-5700 against the 100W TDP A8-3850:

http://www.expreview.com/20232-1.html

However,only 1333MHZ DDR3 is used!

Edit!!

The x264 benchmark is not far off a Core i3 2100:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4083/35042.png

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4083/35043.png

The CB 11.5 MT scores are slightly behind a Core i3 2100:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1501/16/

CB 11.5 single thread score is around the same as a higher clocked FX4100 which has L3 cache:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1766/9/

Also,looking at the AMD 65W TDP Llano CPUs and the Turbo core issues Toms Hardware had when testing their Trinity samples(down to the early nature of the BIOS support),I suspect Turbo core might not be fully engaging too.

[DanceswithUnix]

I advice you get a Core i5 2500K running at 5GHZ and a GTX680 or HD7970 overclocked to 1200MHZ+ to run the game at 1680X1050 on the highest settings. 1920X1080 might be doable on medium.

lol, cheers for the advice but I'm not *that* talentless
(GTX680 would be nice though )

[KeyboardDemon]

However,only 1333MHZ DDR3 is used!

Are you suggest that this was to deliberately sabotage the results?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Are you suggest that this was to deliberately sabotage the results?

Maybe they only had 1333MHZ DDR3 available??

But it sounds daft,because Trinity and Llano benefit from at least 1600MHZ DDR3,for the IGP. In the case of Trinity the IGP is more bandwidth heavy.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I managed to find a review for the 65W TDP A8-3800:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21730/7

It seems the X264 results are around the same:

http://techreport.com/r.x/amd-a8-3800/x264-1.gif

http://techreport.com/r.x/amd-a8-3800/x264-2.gif

OTH,CB 11.5 single threaded scores have gone up by around 24% over the A8-3800:

http://techreport.com/r.x/amd-a8-3800/cinebench.gif

The CB 11.5 MT score is slightly lower,but CB 11.5 does relatively poorly on Bulldozer ,as it is very floating point heavy,and CMT scales worse than SMP.

[scaryjim]

Gaming PCs are always hard to spec, because you just don't know what settings and fps someone would be happy with. My 14yo step-son is currently grinding through Skyrim on our HTPC - a Sempron 140, 2GB single-channel DDR3 1333, HD4200 integrated graphics - and is perfectly happy with it. Yes, it's a bit choppy at times, and it's on absolute minimum graphics (at 1080p, though), but he's enjoying the game, not the pretty! I know there's plenty of gamers on here who just couldn't hack that, but for some people absolute minimum hardware is fine. With the huge improvement in graphics on Llano and Trinity, it should be possible to get at least acceptable gaming on an APU based rig...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The A10-5700 with 1600MHZ DDR3 is starting to turn up in some prebuilt PCs in the US:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883157362



1600MHZ DDR should add another 10% to 15% to the graphics scores.

[scaryjim]

10GB? Seriously? That's just weird....

[Terbinator]

My 14yo step-son is currently grinding through Skyrim on our HTPC - a Sempron 140, 2GB single-channel DDR3 1333, HD4200 integrated graphics - and is perfectly happy with it. Yes, it's a bit choppy at times, and it's on absolute minimum graphics (at 1080p, though), but he's enjoying the game, not the pretty!

http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/image...89b339f854.jpg

It doesn't look too bad on Low tbf^

[scaryjim]

I was seriously impressed with how playable it looks on low settings with a - let's be honest - piss-poor IGP. Must get round to having a bash at it on my PC some time (although I should probably do a bit more of Oblivion first ).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Isn't Skyrim another of those games which needs overclocked Core i5 at 4GHZ+ and GTX680 and HD7970 cards to run at 1920X1080 even without mods??

[Terbinator]

Isn't Skyrim another of those games which needs overclocked Core i5 at 4GHZ+ and GTX680 and HD7970 cards to run at 1920X1080 even without mods??

You should log-in to Aria some time and check out posts by "Dirty Larry". Christ on a bike, i feel like ending myself most of the time so i don't know how you'd go on

For instance: http://forums.aria.co.uk/showthread....=1#post1943585

[HalloweenJack]

wow , and there i was thinking that skyrim can be played on a £100 xbox 360