AMD FX, A10 or Intel i5, if on a tight budget!

[Little*Freak]

Thank you, looking now.

Yeah I got that part, you were very clear , it was me that was thinking about of a crossfire setup with the A10-7700K an a R7 250.

An me that thought a Newer AMD card would make best use of PCIe3, which I was wrong about.

I was only thinking about 16GB of RAM for the A10, sorry I didn't make it clear.

Cheers for all of that, gives me loads to think about, very many thanks.

[scaryjim]

If you've got a 560 Ti to go on with, I'd definitely plough the existing money into an FX CPU and mobo. Kaveri is great but only really worth the money if you're going to use the IGP - as a CPU it barely performs better than a £60 Athlon II X4. And I don't think a Kaveri with dual graphics would outperform a single 448-core 560 Ti, so forget that option.

At which point it's between FX and i5, and for the money I reckon FX is the way to go - particularly if you're targeting BF4, which loves threads. The budget option is the FX6300 which would save you a ton of cash towards a future graphics upgrade, but the FX8320 is very competitively priced at the minute and is well worth a look, particularly if you're comfortable doing some overclocking. If you're looking at a single graphics card - and IMNSHO you should be - then a decent 970-chipset motherboard will do nicely, plus 8GB (not sure why you're thinking of getting more than that?) of DDR3-1600 or 1866 memory (the AM3+ platform won't see any real benefit from ultra fast RAM).

[Willzzz]

Yeah.
FX 6300
MR, RAM and PSU
£250

Gives you plenty spare for a future GPU upgrade.

[Little*Freak]

Not really comfortable doing the overclocking tbh, Scaryjim

My thinking on the Kaveri (architecture) was mainly for something that might come in very useful further down the line programs wise or if I ever sell it or pass it on to family etc.

I'll take a good look at the FX stuff before spending anything, I am trying to take a good long look before I leap this time

Thanks for the ideas man

[Willzzz]

Just concentrate on performance and price.
Features don't mean much until they actually impact performance.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The OP has a Phenom II X4 955BE and a 790 based motherboard(going by a thread he started over on OcUK) with 8GB of 1066MHZ DDR3. One way of upgrading performance might be getting a Phenom II X6 off Ebay although they are not that cheap TBH and you have no clue if they have been overclocked or not.

If you are not overclocking one of the cheap 970 boards would do the trick IMHO if you are getting a new CPU.

Here is a quick list from Amazon:

FX8320 ~ £108

http://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-FX8320-E...eywords=FX8320

8GB 1866MHZ DDR3 ~ £60

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-BLT2...A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Gigabyte 970A-DS3P ~ £50

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigabyte-970...A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

XFX PRO 550W

http://www.amazon.co.uk/XFX-ATX-550-...words=xfx+550w

BitFenix Merc Alpha

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

The total comes to around £300.

If you want to have the option open to do some overclocking I would suggest the following motherboard:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Regarding the graphics card I would consider this one:

http://www.cclonline.com/product/134...yPort/VGA2140/

Going from the name it probably comes with a copy of BF4 although I would confirm that first.

Edit!!

If you get the FX6300 from Novatech and the XFX PRO 450W from Amazon,that should free up another £35:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...00wmhkbox.html
http://www.amazon.co.uk/XFX-Edition-...words=XFX+450W

That means for around £405 you could have an R9 270 and a copy of BF4 too.

[HalloweenJack]

you can get 2400 CL10 ram from ocuk for £60 - and if the board doesn't like it at 2400 it will do 2133 happily

[CountBartok]

Overclockers have B grade 8350's for £99.95 if you mind taking a risk with only 90 days warranty http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...=595&catid=686.
Like you I operate on a limited budget most of my system is built from B grade or sale items except for hard disks and the psu. A psu is one area where cheap is a no for me, as it tends to be the least replaced part in my rig.

[Bagnaj97]

Overclockers have B grade 8350's for £99.95 if you mind taking a risk with only 90 days warranty http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...=595&catid=686.
Like you I operate on a limited budget most of my system is built from B grade or sale items except for hard disks and the psu. A psu is one area where cheap is a no for me, as it tends to be the least replaced part in my rig.

I've got 2 B grade A10-5800Ks and both have been fine, I also took a risk on a B grade HDD (was silly cheap!) - It had been powered on for just 140Hrs according to SMART and it's still running fine with 8531 hours and counting. All from OCUK.

As you're on a budget I'd snap that 8350 up!