New APU or New GPU?

[insanedown58]

So I'm currently pleased with my A4-5300 but I want to upgrade my PC from an Office PC to a Mid-range Gaming PC. I came across 2 cards and 1 AMD APU. I'm talking about the NVidia GTX 650 and the AMD Radeon 7770 while for the APU I'm referring to the Quad-core AMD A8-5600K.

All three of them fall under the same Price range: $100 - $140

Edited September 15, 2013 by insanedown58

[Avitar]

Doesn't the A series chipset come with discreet class GPU? SO the a4 would have a graphics card built in. External graphics may not be used unless set up correctly by applications. Trust me, I have the A6-4400M with Radeon 7520 and the slowest part of my laptop is the CPU. Then again, you don't really need much CPU. SO my recommendation, the A8-5600K. If you can, squeeze out some cash for the 7770, AMD has a native app for Dual Graphics. 7770 i think is better than the 650 (7>6 so more features and 7>5 so 2 bars of performance more.)

[R0H1T]

In such a case I'd advice you to go for AMD's richland APU(6xxx series) & trade your current setup(APU+mobo) for it as it'll fall within your budget of ~150$

Now if you plan to overclock then go for A10 6800K or else the 6700 model(same APU just clocked lower & not unlocked) should be a good upgrade given that its TDP is just 65W

Depending on your upgrade timeline you could alternatively wait for Kaveri APU's which'll release 1Q of next calendar year & they'll be a massive upgrade over AMD's current lineup, bear in mind that you'd be able to crossfire their IGP(if need be) with AMD's low end 77xx series GCN based GPU's

Edited September 15, 2013 by R0H1T

[STEEL]

Screw this :lol: ; If U use Linux/Ubuntu go Radeon GPU. If U use Puppy/ZORAN 7 Lite (on Stick or not, use Nividia GPU).

Windows, any will do :rolleyes:

Me, Iam whaiting 4 Q-Computing to take off (no more GPU,s & :shit: ty Drivers to worry about). :lol: :)

Just my 5Cents.

[insanedown58]

I changed my criteria. Since I'm too lazy to actually download big name titles like BF3 and COD, I decided to just use this as my criteria: Can it emulate PS2 games smoothly? That goes for both the GPUs and the APU :)

[MasterFaster]

For PS2 and Wii emulation you need:

AMD Athlon II X4 651

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K10/AMD-Athlon%20II%20X4%20651%20-%20AD651XWNZ43GX%20%28AD651XWNGXBOX%29.html

and at least an AMD Radeon HD 7770 card

The NVidia GeForce GTX 650 card is slower from AMD Radeon HD 7770.

If you want to buy an NVIDIA card then buy one that is based on GTX 650 Ti or GTX 650 Ti Boost.

[insanedown58]

What about an A10-5800K with Radeon HD 7660D? I completely removed Nvidia from my list of options but I observed that the 7770 is a lot pricier than an A10 with 3.8 GHz

[MasterFaster]

If you motherboard can handle AMD A10-5800K then of course you should buy it. But for gaming you also need a fast gpu.

[LeetPirate]

You should not decide based on price first, that will have a high chance of wasting money.

See benchmarks at your screen resolution for the games you want to play. Some benchmark sites start at 1200p resolution which makes the cards look bad but in reality would perform better at more common resolutions such as 1080p or 720p.

Second thing to consider is AMD APU relies on their older VLIW graphics architecture and does not use their newer GCN architecture so you may not get the performance you expect.

Third thing to consider is AMD still cannot make reliable graphics drivers to save their lives so it will often cripple the hardware or crash, lol.

My recommendation: GTX 650 Ti Boost. It is $150 for EVGA brand. The Boost edition has a wider 192-bit bus which will give better performance at high resolutions.

[R0H1T]

What about an A10-5800K with Radeon HD 7660D? I completely removed Nvidia from my list of options but I observed that the 7770 is a lot pricier than an A10 with 3.8 GHz