New AMD A10 PC for my son's Christmas

Dr. Righteous

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A couple months ago the PC I cobbled together for my son to game on died. Well, it was an old AM2+ Phenom system. I checked it out; found popped caps on the MB. Thing is about 10 years old anyway.
System was a Phenom 2200, which stock clock was 2.2Mhz. Card was a HD5750.

I decided to go with a all new system and decided to go with a A10 7700K APU, based system.
I have 0% experience with AMD APUs. How do you think it will stack up performance wise compared to the old one?
 
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-R7-384-Cores-Kaveri-Desktop.113341.0.html

Here is a quick break down of the video card part of the APU, its hard to compare the GPU since the 5750 is so much older. A stand a lone card like a 460 would make a huge improvement over the APU. It will depend on what your son is trying to play.

Also at least on the CPU side it should be a large improvement no matter what. Was that a first gen Phenom? Make sure if you are dead set on the APU to go with Dual Channel and faster memory.
 
Unless the old 5750 is dead, I'm thinking you'll want to use it.
 
the 5750 is still slightly better than the apu but as luke just said even a $100 card will make a world of difference!
 
Thanks for the input.
Yeah, the old system was a 1st gen Phenom. The A10 CPU side should be much faster. And yes, I always do dual channel, got 8 gigs total under the tree. ;)
Also APUs are capable of a dual graphics setup. If needed I would rather spend a little more on a R7 card than use the old 5750. I know that won't work in a dual graphics mode.
 
Looks like you could pair it with a AMD Radeon™ R7 240 according to
http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/dual-graphics
not sure if you want to deal with the whole hybrid crossfire thing though.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127765&cm_re=r7_240-_-14-127-765-_-Product

I thought i remember reading way back that most games actually lost performance attempting the crossfire

Edit - found this article here that will show you performance
http://www.eteknix.com/kaveri-hybrid-crossfire-a10-7850k-a10-7700k-r7-240-250/5/

Does look like an increase
 
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Are you definitely going with a discrete GPU and did you already buy the APU?

Unless you have a killer deal - the Athlon X4 870k and 860k are faster parts for less (no GPU included).
 
You can get higher framerates with faster memory on the APU but I'm not sure if the costs would cover the difference in FPS (to expensive and it might be better to buy/use dedicated videocard.) , depending on motherboard of course ...
 
The a10 is a huge step up for the processor. The Igpu is probably at this point matches the 5750 -- obviously the 5750 has a lot higher memory bandwidth but i have found old video cards to really struggle these days. I couldnt believe how poorly a 6970 performed on new games.
 
The a10 is a huge step up for the processor. The Igpu is probably at this point matches the 5750 -- obviously the 5750 has a lot higher memory bandwidth but i have found old video cards to really struggle these days. I couldnt believe how poorly a 6970 performed on new games.
I have to believe older cards don't preform well mainly because they stop supporting the drivers for them; not that they are necessarily "slow".
My own system has a HD7870; a rocking card for 1080p gaming. I"m going to stick with unit until AMD totally abandons it.
 
^^ Yup, my 2nd box has a 7870 Tahiti LE in it and it's still kickin' it @1080p. 2 GB card and I don't see any reason to upgrade it at this point. Maybe next year.
 
I've got an A10-7850k. Went the R7 250 dual graphics route. The 2GB GTX960 in there right now absolutely dominates the dual graphics setup, nevermind the iGPU.

Hell, I have a brand new GTX1070 waiting to go into that Steam Box, but I'm trying to finish my server rack so I can retire my Node 304 based i5-3570k from server duties, swap that ITX setup into the RVZ01 case, and I'll toss the A10 into the Node as an on-the-go little steam box.

FWIW, you'll want a real video card with an APU, imho.
 
Well honestly it depends on use cases. The APU will be fine alone if the most you guys play is like minecraft or those facebook games. I bought one for my late wife and she loved it, (original A8), along with a hybrid hard drive and 8 GB of ram. Thing booted fast, played her games, (what she called games anyway, like farmville and whatnot), web browsing and homework....
 
A RX 470 or RX 480 would be a huge upgrade if it fits the budget. Look in the Hotdeals section here. I think I saw a RX 480 4GB for $165. It is a PowerColor that can't be overclocked I believe. So keep that in mind.
 
Well honestly it depends on use cases. The APU will be fine alone if the most you guys play is like minecraft or those facebook games. I bought one for my late wife and she loved it, (original A8), along with a hybrid hard drive and 8 GB of ram. Thing booted fast, played her games, (what she called games anyway, like farmville and whatnot), web browsing and homework....

Yeah, I'm looking for something on par gaming wise with the old 5750 card, maybe sightly better. My son is not a online gamer, playing COD or the like, wearing a headset and shouting obscenities at other players.
He is more into Minecraft, Terraria, ect.
 
Sounds like the apu would be fine then. My son uses a 5 year old dell laptop m4600 and it plays all of his games fine -- roblox, minecraft, Garys mod. Im sure the a10-7700k has much better performance then the nvidia quadro in that old dell.
 
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Well honestly it depends on use cases. The APU will be fine alone if the most you guys play is like minecraft or those facebook games. I bought one for my late wife and she loved it, (original A8), along with a hybrid hard drive and 8 GB of ram. Thing booted fast, played her games, (what she called games anyway, like farmville and whatnot), web browsing and homework....


Sorry about your wife.
 
Yes the APU is kinda weak for gaming you want to compensate with a strong GPU. 7970GE or 280X are top of the line GPUs and pretty cheap on the used market. But you might need a strong PSU. Just for comparison purposes keep in mind that RX470 has the same specs as 7970GE but a bit faster and 1GB more of RAM but just 256bit memory bus instead of 384.
 
If you love your son, don't give him A10 as present.

Joking aside, if you haven't bought it I'd strongly recommend you to reconsider. Skylake i3-6100 would be much better option, in fact it would beat the crap out of A10. Heck, even Pentium G4400 probably (especially after overclocking) and costs ~60 €. Then you could get a cheap GPU, used maybe.
 
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This may cost you more. I don't know. I have an 8350. Would need heatsink as well as MB and ram. I have a Gigabyte 990 fxa-ud5. Don't even know if the board still works. It was in a closet.I had an attic fire. The board was downstairs in a closet. unharmed but the insurance people handled it and packed it up. So who knows. It needs the cpu mounting bracket, back plate and one more screw if you did get a backplate to fit it .Only have three screws. Can have it all free
20161210_103946.jpg

20161210_103900.jpg

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Ive got some ddr3 mem a heatsink and the screws for the am3 braket id send out for free also
 
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Yes the APU is kinda weak for gaming you want to compensate with a strong GPU. 7970GE or 280X are top of the line GPUs and pretty cheap on the used market. But you might need a strong PSU. Just for comparison purposes keep in mind that RX470 has the same specs as 7970GE but a bit faster and 1GB more of RAM but just 256bit memory bus instead of 384.

This is true, but the RX 470 benefits from better compression so while it looks like it has less memory bandwidth it can move as much more data through the pipe. A 6970 on paper still looks like a decent video card to me, but it can only muster about 20fps on newer titles like the division with low settings. Because of mining, 7970 / 280x may still hold a decent resale value -- id just go for a 470 and get the newer tech.
 
This may cost you more. I don't know. I have an 8350. Would need heatsink as well as MB and ram. I have a Gigabyte 990 fxa-ud5. Don't even know if the board still works. It was in a closet.I had an attic fire. The board was downstairs in a closet. unharmed but the insurance people handled it and packed it up. So who knows. It needs the cpu mounting bracket, back plate and one more screw if you did get a backplate to fit it .Only have three screws. Can have it all free

Wow, appreciate the offer but really but my goal was to get new components and reuse the 2 new things that was in the old PC. That was the SSD and the DVD drive.
Got everything needed for less than $300. Like I said before, his kind of gaming is Terraria. He actually doesn't like FPS games that much. He told me once he likes games that takes some thinking and planning.
Not just running and killing everything. He loves RTS games, puzzle games. Heck back during the summer he started learning some Python programming. That's my boy!
 
A couple months ago the PC I cobbled together for my son to game on died. Well, it was an old AM2+ Phenom system. I checked it out; found popped caps on the MB. Thing is about 10 years old anyway.
System was a Phenom 2200, which stock clock was 2.2Mhz. Card was a HD5750.

I decided to go with a all new system and decided to go with a A10 7700K APU, based system.
I have 0% experience with AMD APUs. How do you think it will stack up performance wise compared to the old one?

I have a 7850K clocked to 4ghz with memory at 2133 for my 9yr old daughter. She used to play very simple games but as she got older is moving up to more advanced games like the Sims 4. The APU was no longer cutting it. Previously I tried the dual graphics with a 250, and that was pure shite. I got a deal on a GTX 960 4gb and tossed that in there partly due to its low heat and power consumption since it is housed in a small mitx case. The 960/7850K combo has done well, it can play the Sims, PVZ Garden Warfare, and various other double A games without a problem at 1080p.
 
For what its worth, I have a A10 7870K I picked up on a hot deal as a secondary machine - its OC'd to 4.44Ghz with 1040Mhz on gpu, and is running ddr3 2400 ram. It's fast enough to run things like Civ 6, Star Craft 2, Eve Online, etc just with the integrated graphics. FWIW, I used some left over WC gear from years past to put a custom loop on it. I wouldn't feel bad using this as my primary gaming machine if those games were the only things I played.
 
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