Are APUs really good enough?

[Guest]

So yeah, I've been thinking about building a low powered gaming PC to plug into my TV, now the tricky bit comes with the settings, for £360 I could buy an Xbox One so ideally I want a PC to offer better game performance at the same price point, not difficult you say, well lets get down to the hardware, to save money I was going to use my second graphics card from my desktop which is a HD7970, now thats quite power hungry which puts it off the cards somewhat, so should I buy a cheaper GPU? Well it seams a bit of a waste since Ive got the 7970 going spare.

 

So in the end I came to the conclusion that the best idea might be just to get an APU and not have a dedicated graphics card, its cost effective and since its in the consoles it must be able to play modern games on ok settings, well Ive heard a lot of stories to the contrary so I was wondering if anyone has any genuine experience with the APUs, more specifically the AMD A10 7850K and know if its actually worth the hassle, all I want is a nice little machine which allows me to sit back and play some games on my big screen, what kind of performance will the APU offer?

[CowsGoRoar]

I would rather get a console. APU's are very cheap, for people on a budget. This assumes that the user will get a budget priced monitor, which is lower than 1080p.

 

At 1080p on lowest settings, the 7850K can only get about 45 FPS on regular games, low-medium settings, BF4 with Mantle gets you that much, also assuming you have 2400 MHz RAM. Other triple A games that don't support Mantle will drop lower.

[Clyne]

If you're doing some light gaming then a apu is good enough.

There's some benchmarks at the end.

[CoolBeans]

What is your budget? if you have a 7970 you should get a FX processor 

[Nineshadow]

Why would you ever want an APU if you have a 7970?

[Guest]

My brother's got a laptop with an a10 apu and has no problems playing games like DOTA 2 and Civ 5, hasn't tried more demanding games on it though (and this is with the integrated graphics). They are ok for casual gaming.

 

An APU wouldn't be an ideal match for a powerful card like the 7970 though, would definitely bottleneck the card's true potential, that's still a very powerful card capable of playing games with high settings! I'd consider getting an FX instead. FX 8320 can be had for pretty cheap. edit: actually looks like the FX- 8320 is even cheaper than the a10 7850 lol.

[Manny Calavera]

7850k is worse than HD7750. its not enough for gamer. 

 

you would want your 7970 in that machine, maybe downclock and downvolted

or buy a 860 / 860ti when it comes out if you are some concerned about electricity lol

[OfficialJsP]

I would rather get a console. APU's are very cheap, for people on a budget. This assumes that the user will get a budget priced monitor, which is lower than 1080p.

 

At 1080p on lowest settings, the 7850K can only get about 45 FPS on regular games, low-medium settings, BF4 with Mantle gets you that much, also assuming you have 2400 MHz RAM. Other triple A games that don't support Mantle will drop lower.

 

u act like that is bad its better than the console experience also u can crossfire them with the new radeon cards

[CowsGoRoar]

u act like that is bad its better than the console experience 

No, I'd rather use console. This is only my suggestion, so OP can see other options.

[OfficialJsP]

No, I'd rather use console. This is only my suggestion, so OP can see other options.

 ok  :lol:

[Guest]

Why would you ever want an APU if you have a 7970?

As I said in my opening post I don't want to put them together, I started out by wanting to build myself a low powered media PC, I was going to use the HD7970 in said PC but thinking about the sort of CPU required I realized I woulden't be building a low powered PC at all, which put the 7970 kind of out the window. The problem is the fact its here kind of makes buying and putting a lower powered dedicated GPU in the system seam like a waste, which is why I was thinking of going with the APU alone without a dedicated graphics card. It will certainly be energy efficient but the question is, will it be any good?

 

 

I would rather get a console. APU's are very cheap, for people on a budget. This assumes that the user will get a budget priced monitor, which is lower than 1080p.

 

At 1080p on lowest settings, the 7850K can only get about 45 FPS on regular games, low-medium settings, BF4 with Mantle gets you that much, also assuming you have 2400 MHz RAM. Other triple A games that don't support Mantle will drop lower.

To be honest I'm thinking a console might just be easier, I got a decent gaming PC, I just want something extra for kicking back and playing some fun games on the telly every now and then.

[Solkia]

There's really no point.

 

an Athlon X4 750K + r7 260 will only run you about $40 more, and performance that's more worth the money. You could even probably get away with a Pentium so you have the option to upgrade to an i5 in the future.

[Guest]

There's really no point.

 

an Athlon X4 750K + r7 260 will only run you about $40 more, and performance that's more worth the money. You could even probably get away with a Pentium so you have the option to upgrade to an i5 in the future.

To be honest I was thinking of building a Pentium PC with that special edition release they did, but then I'd probably need a dedicated GPU which leads back to my initial point of being kinda wasteful considering I got a decent one lying around thats just a little too powerful for this build.

[Jerakl]

Atom Evans did a really good console killer build guide, using an APU. Go check it out.

[deviant88]

The solution is obvious buy a high performance PC or a PS4.

Your options for apu/xbox is bad none are an option lol.