Proposed AMD Rig or wait until January?

[RichieLee]

Hi there, I'm thinking of putting together a new AMD based rig. As always any thoughts or advice appreciated.

I've been told to wait because a new range of AMD cpus are coming about early January. Thing is I dont intend on getting a top spec cpu though. I'm actually looking at the Athlon II X3's, so would this actually affect me? The cpu I'm looking at is circa £65 now as it is, I cant seeing them getting any cheaper personally.

I'm Trying to keep costs down this time round as last time I spent a fortune and didn't use my PC often enough to warrant the cost. I then jumped ship to a macbook at uni, I seriously cant fault them, they're imo brilliant and utterly reliable but I cant warrant the £2k price tag for the macbook pro I've specced up, hence the thought of a new desktop and I want to get into games again.

Previously I've built my own intel rig. It cost me close to £1k at the time with the peripherals. This time I'm trying to stick as close to £500 as possible but there is some wiggle room as I'm carrying over the case and PSU from my old build.

So basically the proposed spec is:

stuff carrying over:

Antec P182 case
LG 21.5" LED montior
Corsair 520w modular psu (Would this be enough for the new build?)

Spec to get:

CPU-Athlon II X3 460 3.4ghz- £65
GPU-ATI 6850- Either Powercolour standard version @775mhz at £100 or XFX 800mhz vers@£110. (is the 25mhz difference worth the extra £10???)
8GB DDR3 RAM not sure whether to go for 1333mhz or 1600mhz advice appreciated. £30-35
120gb SSD about £120
2TB Samsung F4 HDD around £80
Asus M5A7L USB3 mobo £57
Windows 7 home premium 64bit £70

Again advice appreciated, if there's a more suitable GPU kicking around I'm happy to compromise. The main use of the rig will be for photoshop illustration work so plenty of PSDs, RAW files as I'm into photography too, music and some gaming, (Skyrim and a few others but bear in mind I'm not a hardcore gamer.)

All the best

Richie

[RichieLee]

Also I'm not sure on what cooler to get for the CPU, I used a arctic cooler 7 on my last build but I dont think it's compatible with the AMD cpu?

[DanceswithUnix]

There is always something better just around the corner, the best time to build a machine is when you need it.

Old AMD Athlon CPUs seem to be running out of stock, so that will probably go up in price. But then hopefully the FX prices will come down.

That seems a tad high for the RAM price, and speed of ram doesn't seem to make that much difference.

If you aren't that bothered with gaming, the 6770 will save you quite a few quid which you could put into a faster CPU. Still be fast enough for game use mind, I'm not saying get something slow.

I bought one of these recently, and it is nice and quiet at idle and plays Portal 2, Civilization etc at 2048x1152 at quite high settings.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-m...ual-link-dvi-i

Money saved would get you into Phenom or FX X4 CPU price range.

[Domestic_Ginger]

maybe just get a GPU but is there really much difference between your CPU and an athlonII x3?

If you are asking then you can't be that desperate and might as well wait!

[RichieLee]

Thanks DWU.

In that case I may well just go for some budget crucial 1333mhz RAM, I'm assuming I'll need to utilise DDR3 modules to be compatible with my board.

I do intend to get back into gaming, But knowing me it'll probably be some indie titles which will be a breeze and the Bethesda titles, Fallout 3, NV, Skyrim. Not a huge player of FPSs to be fair so I wouldnt worry about massive BF3 battles.

What are the particular advantages of the Phenom or FX X4 cpus? The X3 460 is rated at 3.4ghz, whereas for the same spec Phenom or X4 chips it seems to be a massive hike in price. Chances are I wont be overclocking, I didnt on my last PC.

[RichieLee]

maybe just get a GPU but is there really much difference between your CPU and an athlonII x3?

If you are asking then you can't be that desperate and might as well wait!

The parts from my intel rig are being donated to my brother.

The current cpu is a dual core E6750 2.6ghz, but the X3 is rated at 3.4ghz and triple core. I assume this would be a mild but none the less significant increase.

I can wait I guess, I'm currently still using the mac! But space is running out quickly and I've filled my HDD and external HDDs, just seems like an opportune moment to get back into gaming and build a 'proper' workstation.

[scaryjim]

Phenom II CPUs have extra cache memory, which means they have to go back to the (relatively) slow system memory less often, which gives a performance boost in a lot of tasks. Also if you get a Phenom II you'll end up with an X4 or X6, so more cores

The FX range are a completely different architecture so can't be compared based on clock speed alone, but the initial reviews of them weren't that great.

The 6770 DWU linked to is great value for a gaming card, and will be absolutely fine for most modern games if you tweak the settings down a bit. That'll save you almost £30, which is enough to get the CPU up to a Phenom II X4 960T. That's a quad core 3GHz CPU, that can Turbo up to 3.4GHz in lightly threaded applications. With the extra cache too, it should perform at least as well as an Athlon II X3 in all situations.

The other option would be to spend an extra £10 on a Phenom II X6 1045T, which is a six-core processor that's very good for multithreaded tasks, but perhaps a bit slower than the Athlon II X3 for lightly threaded tasks. I don't use photoshop so I'm not the best person to advise on how threaded it is - I'm sure someone else can add that info.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I know a few mates with Athlon II X3 CPU. One of them unlocked it to a Phenom II X4,another to an Athlon II X4 and the other did not unlock. However,the unlockable Athlon II X3 overclocked to 4GHZ!

With a 4GHZ Athlon II X3 and an HD5850 1GB my mate plays Skyrim at 1920X1080 on maximum settings with lower levels of AA and AF. I play Fallout:New Vegas and with a Core i3 2100 and an HD5850 1GB and it barely stresses the CPU and GPU at 1680X1050. My overclocked HD4830 1GB and a Q6600 at around 3GHZ could run both Fallout 3 and Fallout:New Vegas fine at 1440X900 at maximum settings.

[RichieLee]

Thanks for the info Cat, that sounds promising!
I do however use photoshop and painter quite a lot so I think the potential extra cores may help. Remember, this wont be exclusively a gaming rig though, so I guess I'll be going for the Phenom X4. With some reports of OCs going up to 4ghz, it sounds like a worthy bit of kit if I decided to go that route. At 3ghz standard it'll be a step up from the 2.1ghz intel core2duo of my macbook anyway.

I've already ordered a 2TB samsung F4 HDD for the princely sum of £69 delivered on Amazon! No more umming and arring, this build will go ahead, just sorting out the fine details and strategically working out when to buy the rest of the bits.

Still torn between the 6770 and the 6850, I've seen a 6850 for £99 which brings the price nearly within range, I hope the new ATi GPUs might push the prices down further.

Just clear this up for me guys. Basically what would you prioritise more? GPU, CPU, mobo RAM? I know having strong links in all these fields would help the performance but in laymans terms what does each thing do exactly? I'll have a nosey on google now anyway but I keep fiddling with the spec trying to get the right balance.

All the best

Rich

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You need to strike a balance. With photography CPU speed is important but having a fast disk and enough RAM and the more important things to consider initially.

For gaming it is important to get fast enough CPU but most games will still be GPU limited. I would get an HD6850 1GB over an HD6770 1GB as will be cheaper in the long run.

Generally speaking,the Intel CPUs tend to do better at Photoshop than AMD ones. So a Core i3 2100 is worth considering. It is also a decent gaming CPU. Regarding the SSD it is better to get a drive which use synchronous NAND like the Crucial M4.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Also another alternative might be an FX4100:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/10-ca...200mhz-95w-ret

It comes with a £10 cashback ATM meaning it will be under £80 which is not bad value for the price.

For image editing it is generally better than a Phenom II X4 955BE or A8 3850:

http://ht4u.net/reviews/2011/amd_fx_...ew/index14.php

http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/2382...-photoshop-cs4

http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/2382...ama-factory-v5

Gaming performance at stock clockspeeds is variable - sometimes its comparable to an Athlon II X3 455 in performance and other times its closer to a Phenom II X4 955BE.

The FX4100 is meant to be reasonable for overclocking too with the stock cooler - it seems to consume much less power overclocked when compared to the FX6100,FX8120 and FX8150 CPUs.

Basically your choices are:
1.)Athlon II X3 455 or 460 ~ £60
2.)FX4100 ~ £78 to £80
3.)Core i3 2100 or 2120 ~ £90 to £100
4.)Phenom II X6 1045T ~ £104

[RichieLee]

Thanks for the advice Cat.

In the end I went for:

Phenom II x4 960t black edition
HIS 6850
coolermaster 212 evo
intel 120gb ssd
8gb ram

a little over budget of my initial £500 target but the build's doing me well!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Thanks for the advice Cat.

In the end I went for:

Phenom II x4 960t black edition
HIS 6850
coolermaster 212 evo
intel 120gb ssd
8gb ram

a little over budget of my initial £500 target but the build's doing me well!

What motherboard??

The Phenom II X4 960T has the potential to be unlocked to a Phenom II X6.

[RichieLee]

asus m5a7l as in original post. Unlocked to 6 cores already at a push of a button! Not OCed yet though, I've never done it in the past so I havent touched it yet! the rig is running very smooth though