AMD Athlon X4 845 CPU Review

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Overclockers Club has the budget friendly AMD Athlon X4 845 processor on the test bench today. What kind of performance can you expect from a processor that costs less than $60? You might just be surprised.

Not only does the new Excavator core design perform exceedingly well at gaming and general use tasks, it actually beats out the more expensive Piledriver chips that are running at much higher clocks in a few tests! Granted, you don't get absolute bleeding edge performance, but for under $60, the AMD Athlon X4 845 is one heck of a deal! At under $120 for a CPU and motherboard pairing, it doesn't take much imagination to realize you can put together a very capable gaming machine for not a whole lot of Benjamins.
 
Hmm nice! I wanted to send this to my family member but the article is not showing up on the mobile view (possibly web cacheing)
 
This CPU is for low-end gaming rigs basically exclusively. Because if you're not gaming, you need the onboard video and if you have more money, you can do better. I think it really hits that segment well, where else can you get a quad core CPU for $60?
 
Quix said:
This CPU is for low-end gaming rigs basically exclusively. Because if you're not gaming, you need the onboard video and if you have more money, you can do better. I think it really hits that segment well, where else can you get a quad core CPU for $60?
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eBay.
 
It did quite well in all the gaming benchmarks. Not bad at all for $60!

Here is the Batman Arkham Origins 1080p chart from the article. Can't complain about that performance for $60!

amd_athlon_x4_845_cpu_1920_x_1080.jpeg
 
would be interested to see it paired with a slightly newer GPU, but I guess that's not the point... maybe one of those RX 480's?? ;)
 
admiralperpetual said:
would be interested to see it paired with a slightly newer GPU, but I guess that's not the point... maybe one of those RX 480's?? ;)
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That would be interesting. $120 for the CPU and MOBO and then $200 for the video card. That is a pretty sweet rig for not a lot of green. You would obviously still need the rest of the kit, but still not bad.
 
Shmee said:
That would be interesting. $120 for the CPU and MOBO and then $200 for the video card. That is a pretty sweet rig for not a lot of green. You would obviously still need the rest of the kit, but still not bad.
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Except for the huge bottleneck caused by the CPU, I think it will be better suited to a 370/470 when it comes out.
On the other hand This is much cheaper than a 860k and is almost the same CPU, i wish they were this cheap in Canada. the 860k is $100 here.
 
Nukester said:
ROFL. What an answer :). I would never buy a used processor.
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Why not? Got a Xeon E5450 from ebay for $20, sticker modded it for LGA 775. Kicks ass as a HTPC for CS:GO gaming and Plex server.
 
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SPARTAN VI said:
Why not? Got a Xeon E5450 from ebay for $20, sticker modded it for LGA 775. Kicks ass a HTPC and Plex server.
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I've decided to do this when the x99 server chips get cheap. Just got to be fast when they start to drop in price and get the darn motherboard first. The price of motherboards is what makes me not do the Xeon thing. Especially when the motherboard costs more than what it did new. ;)
 
But can it play Overwatch while simultaneously streaming with OBS to Twitch on Very Fast preset?

A: No chance in hell.
 
EODetroit said:
But can it play Overwatch while simultaneously streaming with OBS to Twitch on Very Fast preset?

A: No chance in hell.
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You forgot to mention that it doesn't fly you to mars and isn't capable of doing back flips in the motherboard socket.
 
Nukester said:
Because I'm paranoid about amateur over clockers
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I see your point, and that is a valid fear. X58 overclocking isn't so trivial like K series cpus now. However in the case of the X5650 that was/is really popular, certain sellers had tons of them, so they were clearly just companies that would part out servers. They weren't overclocking those, they just sold them as fast as they could. You could buy from them and the odds of getting an abused cpu would be pretty low.

I have a few qualms about that Xeon path though. One is that those cpus perform really, really well in most things, but they are missing certain feature sets like AVX. Maybe it doesn't matter much, but still these little things bug me. The bigger issue is that the motherboards are almost impossible to replace unless you spend a small fortune. I would rather have something newer and easier to replace if it goes bad.
 
a3venom said:
Except for the huge bottleneck caused by the CPU, I think it will be better suited to a 370/470 when it comes out.
On the other hand This is much cheaper than a 860k and is almost the same CPU, i wish they were this cheap in Canada. the 860k is $100 here.
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There isn't a CPU below an unlocked i5 that won't present at least some bottleneck to a 970/390 or higher class card. i3s of any flavor can't do it, 83X0's can't do it. So since *everything* in the budget market bottlenecks at least slightly on a 970/390 class card, and the that ceiling is being lowered all the way to $200, it makes sense to just say spend the $200 on any existing i3 or AM3 and enjoy your totally topped out budget system. You'll still see near 60 FPS with nearly everything topped out at 1080p@60Hz.
 
pgaster said:
I see your point, and that is a valid fear. X58 overclocking isn't so trivial like K series cpus now. However in the case of the X5650 that was/is really popular, certain sellers had tons of them, so they were clearly just companies that would part out servers. They weren't overclocking those, they just sold them as fast as they could. You could buy from them and the odds of getting an abused cpu would be pretty low.

I have a few qualms about that Xeon path though. One is that those cpus perform really, really well in most things, but they are missing certain feature sets like AVX. Maybe it doesn't matter much, but still these little things bug me. The bigger issue is that the motherboards are almost impossible to replace unless you spend a small fortune. I would rather have something newer and easier to replace if it goes bad.
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You knew how to utilize your knowledge of CPU's to your advantage. All of your points are completely valid and you got an upgrade, cheap
 
jbc029 said:
There isn't a CPU below an unlocked i5 that won't present at least some bottleneck to a 970/390 or higher class card. i3s of any flavor can't do it, 83X0's can't do it. So since *everything* in the budget market bottlenecks at least slightly on a 970/390 class card, and the that ceiling is being lowered all the way to $200, it makes sense to just say spend the $200 on any existing i3 or AM3 and enjoy your totally topped out budget system. You'll still see near 60 FPS with nearly everything topped out at 1080p@60Hz.
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yea
 
FM2+ screws my desire for this chip. Why not make it AM3/AM3+ and it would be a really nice cheap upgrade for aging Phenom 2 systems. No no, you get to buy a whole new mobo/ram/etc. Well guess what, unless the motherboard is free, why bother? If you're looking for the super cheap, Microcenter has A6-7400k WITH a mobo for $60. For some reason they don't like to bundle the Athlon X4 chips.

Hey I used to be an AMD fanatic, and I still have 3 AMD systems (2 x 8320e's and my old P2-955) that I use for grunt work and test systems. Just not feeling the AMD love any more.

I mean you can get an i3 and a mobo for $120 that will just beat that 845 up. Yeah it's $60 more, but you're still under $150 with a mobo.
 
Burticus said:
FM2+ screws my desire for this chip. Why not make it AM3/AM3+ and it would be a really nice cheap upgrade for aging Phenom 2 systems. No no, you get to buy a whole new mobo/ram/etc. Well guess what, unless the motherboard is free, why bother? If you're looking for the super cheap, Microcenter has A6-7400k WITH a mobo for $60. For some reason they don't like to bundle the Athlon X4 chips.

Hey I used to be an AMD fanatic, and I still have 3 AMD systems (2 x 8320e's and my old P2-955) that I use for grunt work and test systems. Just not feeling the AMD love any more.

I mean you can get an i3 and a mobo for $120 that will just beat that 845 up. Yeah it's $60 more, but you're still under $150 with a mobo.
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The athlon chips are fine for their price at stock configs with $40ish Mobos. Hopefully you can get some little or moderate OC out of it without investing a dollar extra.

Once people go full retard and want to overclock these to very high clocks and invest another 30 in cooler and 20 - 30 extra in the mobo for better VRMs etc, then it enters i3 pricing and a very very very bad price/perf deal.
 
britjh22 said:
I would normally agree, but $60 e5-2670's are hard to argue with.
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Argue: low clock with no overclock possible, tests show shit performance in games due to this, and gamers* being (much) better off buying something with less cores / threads and higher clock speeds.

* Users of very threadable programs will do very well with these, of course
 
LMT MFA said:
Argue: low clock with no overclock possible, tests show shit performance in games due to this, and gamers* being (much) better off buying something with less cores / threads and higher clock speeds.

* Users of very threadable programs will do very well with these, of course
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Absolutely but i'd be shocked if they are slower than a x4 athlon in gaming
 
LMT MFA said:
Argue: low clock with no overclock possible, tests show shit performance in games due to this, and gamers* being (much) better off buying something with less cores / threads and higher clock speeds.

* Users of very threadable programs will do very well with these, of course
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I think you might be surprised just how capable it is, the boost clock basically puts it at stock i7-2600 non boost, which is still pretty handy for games. My GF is running one, coming from a Phenom II X4 955, and it is a big upgrade for not much money (gotta find a cheap X79 though).
 
SPARTAN VI said:
Why not? Got a Xeon E5450 from ebay for $20, sticker modded it for LGA 775. Kicks ass as a HTPC for CS:GO gaming and Plex server.
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I would do that, but my LGA setup is on DDR2 so I could buy an X845, MB and 16 GB of DDR3 for not much more than 16 GB of DDR2 would cost. Upgrading to a Xeon and overclocking past 4 GHz while leaving the RAM at 4 GB would be silly.
 
In a month take this and throw Polaris at it... that's the making of a pretty sweet HTPC or Budget Gamer rig.
 
jbc029 said:
There isn't a CPU below an unlocked i5 that won't present at least some bottleneck to a 970/390 or higher class card. i3s of any flavor can't do it, 83X0's can't do it. So since *everything* in the budget market bottlenecks at least slightly on a 970/390 class card, and the that ceiling is being lowered all the way to $200, it makes sense to just say spend the $200 on any existing i3 or AM3 and enjoy your totally topped out budget system. You'll still see near 60 FPS with nearly everything topped out at 1080p@60Hz.
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If you consider just about the only option for a new CPU for budget gaming from Intel: The G3258... That thing bottlenecks before this AMD offering ever would... and you get a quadcore for about $10 more. Hard to beat this. Anyone who is going to build and spend for an i3 is going to look into i5 options before considering it.
 
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