AMD A6-3500

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delvryboy

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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103951

I haven't really played with AMD, I know BD is pretty much a flop.

I'm building a rig for the mancave that will basically be web browsing, 1080p playback, and light gaming.... pretty much Civ5 and Airline Tycoon 2.

I was going to go with an i3 sandy, but this looks a little more cost efficient. I do have a 5750 laying around, but I'd prefer not to use it.

Opinions? Just need a cpu and mobo.
 
Pretty much. Should be able to play SCII and even BF at reasonable resolutions as evidenced by youtube videos of llanos.
 
the a6 will do good on every but probably Civ 5 @ 1080p resolution. it will be playable at low settings but it will more then likely have a bit of lag between turns as the AI make their moves. my heavily overclocked 8800GT can barely play the game just to give you an idea. but other then that it's a great processor for the needs you described. and if it happens to not be enough for you, you can throw an HD6500 series GPU in there for crossfire but its a little finicky to deal with.
 
I have one in the HTPC rig and the kids play Lego games on it. Harry Potter seems to be the only one it can't handle in 1080. Xbit labs had a good review with benches of all the llanos against similar i3 and Pentiums. FWIW, mine was able to undervolt as low as 1.1v, but I haven't ventured lower yet.

Also, there is a promo on the OEM 3850 at newegg for only 120 bucks and it's probably worth the 30 dollar difference unless you are heat/power constrained. That said, the 3850 also reportedly undervolts pretty substantially too.

Your 5750 and a 530 celeron is another cheap option.

edit:
that xbit labs review:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-fusion-intel-core-i3.html
the 3500 is hurt most by it's low base clock and sometimes makes it up in multi-threaded apps
 
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If you have a spare 5750 I'd say you should use it and maybe couple it with a Pentium dual core and H61/67 board or opt to go the Llano route if you don't want to use the GPU. I have a 5750 and it plays any games really well -- max settings -- at 720p. At 1080p it does slow down and requires medium or low settings depending on the game, but you'd get better performance out of the 5750 than any Llano or Sandy based graphics (unless you opt to crossfire the Llano).

If you can wait, though, it seems the Trinity APUs appear to be better than AMD initially expected and should be here by the end of the first half of 2012.

http://www.fudzilla.com/processors/item/25628-amd-increases-performance-of-trinity-cores

If you aren't in any particular rush and planned on building it around that time then it couldn't hurt to wait, but if you plan on deciding whether to go Llano or Trinity based on the above then keep in mind AMD has recently talked up their CPUs with synthetic benchmarks only to have them pretty much fail (Bulldozer), so these projections should be taken with a grain of salt. Hope this helps :)
 
Swung by MC today. Ended up with eh A6-3650 for $99 and a MSI A75MA-G55 for $74.99. I asked if they could give me the combo credit($40) that only showed for Phenom processors and they obliged. Walked at $148.50 w/tax.

2 questions:

The A8-3870K was $134.99, I'm wondering if I should go back and exchange....

Can the non-K processors be overclocked?
 
my a8 non k is running happily at 3500 mhz.

I read a ton of stuff about AMD recommending a 147 mhz fsb as the sweet spot, but I can't get anything above 120 to work, but I am on an itx board and it's not the most robust platform I have ever worked with. you can't run the hard drives in ahci and have to run them in ide mode, otherwise pushing the fsb knocks the hard drive controller out of whack.


I would love to play with an a8 and a top pf the line enthusiast mobo, but I don't even think such a thing exists.
 
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Are you able to run ahci with that overclock? Everything I've read about llano OCing mentions having to run IDE and I'd rather not sacrifice the SSD performance.
 
the performance loss is splitting hairs, not enough to notice it for me.

the extra mhz more than make up for it.
 
all llano can be overclocked via mutiplier and fsb.

just need a little program called k10stat.

a6 vs the a8, to get a few more shaders on the gpu i think the clock rate is a bit higher as well on the gpu.

in comparison the difference is pretty small. Cpu wise, gpu wise its noticeably faster. Is it worth the extra $$ if you game then it might be, otherwise no.
 
You sure? Everything I'm digging up says only the mobile chips can OC with K10stat.
 
what is the difference between using k10stat on mobile or desktop?

anyway i have personally used it on my labtop. (a4-3300m@3ghz) I don't exactly have a desktop llano to mess with to confirm. I don't see why it wouldn't work though.
 
I believe only the mobile chips overclock with k10stat. Anyrate they can overclock from the bios -- two things to look out for if your using FSB overclocking is Hard drive needs to be in IDE mode and your video needs to be digital (hdmi/dvi) i think the analog video and AHCI sata stop working much over 105fsb..

it seems most llano chips can reach 3.4-3.8ghz. my a8-3870k plays star craft, call of duty MW3, borderlands so well that i dont even use my dedicated video cards for gaming. Im using 1280x1024 display though.
 
The desktop chips reportedly don't have P-states to switch.
Click to expand...

all modern cpu's have p-states. The mobile chips just have more, to save on battery life. Desktop cpu's namely Amd's cpu's use cool and quiet, which is just a fancy way to say the processor switches p-states according to computing load.

Did a search and this this collection of forum posts.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1075963/using-k10stat

seems to work just fine on desktop processors.
 
I havent tried it on this A8-3870k since its unlocked, but my 631 would let you change the multiplier ( i mean it would visually change but not really change.) cpu-z reported clock speeds high as 4.2ghz but it benchmarked like it was stock speeds unless i overclocked the FSB.
 
Ok. I could spend a few more dollars and pick up a FX8120 + mobo and use my 5750

That vs the A6?
 
8120 for an HTPC tasked with light gaming and 1080p playback? Overkill.

I'd keep that 5750. I have one myself and it would make a great HTPC card. It'll do 1080p gaming but only with lowered settings.

Do you have a motherboard? or are you needing one?
 
i'd say overkill lol.

You talk about the llano and end up with a bulldozer. Completely different processor markets, but hey at least this machine will not need a upgrade for quite some time.
 
delvryboy said:
Already grabbed a combo. I know the 8120 is overkill, but i do overkill often.
Click to expand...

8120 could make great use for HTPC if you do a lot of encoding. I use to rip blu-rays to my hard drive and could of certainly used the extra processing power.

the A6-3500 would be good for playback light gaming is a risk with such a low clock speed.
 
Did some heavy thinking. Sold the 5750, swapped up to the A8 -3870k, and picked up a Samsung 830 64GB.
 
Although this is irrelevent for the OP since he went 8120, I have had good experience with a recent A6-3500 build. I like how well it sleeps and comes back and how quiet it is with no video card. The processor draws little power when sleeping and it stays relatively cool.

She has had no issues with Sims, but that is the extent of gaming. The only odd occurrence is that even overclocked (using the Asus "easy button") the overpriced 1800 DDR3 only clocks to 1366 or something like that. I will need to investigate further, but for a budget build crammed into an Antec Aria case, it worked out well.

EH
 
Nope, went with the 3870k. Still sitting here, been playing with sleeving and color scheme.
 
I always thought Llano is best as HTPC when used as a mini ITX box. You got a quite portable box that does any HTPC task.

Some of Lian Li ITX cases are especially good with lots of drive bays for RAID storage if you need one.
 
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