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How good is a10 7870k for a bit of gaming?

lemonade

lemonade

lemonade

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I'm looking into building another mini itx system, this time to stick in the living room to use for entertainment and as a sort of steam box. On a tight budget, around £300 for mobo, cpu, case and psu, have some ram and ssd already.

Anyway was thinking of using the 7870k, how good is this at running games? The gaming side would be most casual, games played would be anything from Sonic, to GTA, Dirt, Fifa etc.

Not bothered about playing on high settings on everything.

Any feedback would be appreciated, been out of the loop since I last build a rig, so not sure what the best options are.
 
Sounds titles run really well on the 7870k, but others like Crysis 3 will need a fair bit of compromise.

I played dirt just give on my 7850k, I was overclocking the igpu though. Tomb raider runs great on it, and many more.

Casual gaming will mostly be fine. Don't expect to be rubbing the latest GTA with anything above low/medium though.
 
Cheers guys, sounds good will go for it then, hope it doesn't run things at low an FPS, the option of being able to add discreet gpu is appealing although will be limited by the itx case and psu I plan on getting.

Thinking of whether to wait for the Excavator APU's, but then I'll just wait for the next and the one after etc.
 
I didn't really delve too much into a separate cpu and gpu option as I figured I would need to spend well in excess of £100 for anything worthwhile, plus would need to spend more on a beefier PSU and bigger case too.
 
And 860K and a 750/750Ti may fit the bill. The 750 cards are very efficient, some of them don't even have a PCIe power connector, plus certain models are very small.

To get the best out of an APU, higher speed memory can boost performance.
 
ukxenon said:
Higher speed the ram the better for a apu
Click to expand...

This is very important, 2400MHz offers a huge performance boost over say 1600MHz memory.

A 7870k with 2400MHz RAM will play all games at 720P fine and most games at 1080P at acceptable levels.
 
Oh that sucks :( I'm reusing corsair vengeance lp 8GB ram I have spare in the draw, think they are 1600mhz.

Might need to sell them then and get some corsair Vengeance Pro Series ram.
 
I deliberately chose 2400Mhz Ram when I built my APU System and probably the reason why it performed so well.
 
I've done a bit more reading and massively regretting going with the APU and building around that, it appears it's not all that good or efficient, so I will be returning all the stuff bar the motherboard and going for a separate CPU and GPU, should have done my homework properly first! :(

I've had a change of thought too and would now like to do 1080p gaming as much as possible, this is also going to be played on a TV and I would like it to last at least 3 years, so the APU won't cut it I guess.

So is the 850k cpu mentioned above the best budget CPU? would have like to get an Intel CPU and board but they don't seem to be good value for money for a budget build.

With the GFX card my budget would be £100, so I guess the 750Ti fits the bill, but what is the AMD equivalent of that? Would rather stick with AMD as I have had bad experience with nvidia and overheating in the past.

If an equivalent AMD card runs as good or better then the HD6850 in my main rig then I will be happy with that.

Cheers for the help guys.
 
lemonade said:
I've done a bit more reading and massively regretting going with the APU and building around that, it appears it's not all that good or efficient, so I will be returning all the stuff bar the motherboard and going for a separate CPU and GPU, should have done my homework properly first! :(

I've had a change of thought too and would now like to do 1080p gaming as much as possible, this is also going to be played on a TV and I would like it to last at least 3 years, so the APU won't cut it I guess.

So is the 850k cpu mentioned above the best budget CPU? would have like to get an Intel CPU and board but they don't seem to be good value for money for a budget build.

With the GFX card my budget would be £100, so I guess the 750Ti fits the bill, but what is the AMD equivalent of that? Would rather stick with AMD as I have had bad experience with nvidia and overheating in the past.

If an equivalent AMD card runs as good or better then the HD6850 in my main rig then I will be happy with that.

Cheers for the help guys.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't under estimate the A10 7870K paired with 2400Mhz ram. That said it will greatly benefit from Dual Graphics and adding a cheap discrete GPU such as a R7 240/250/260. Nonetheless if you want to go the single GPU route then these would be my suggestions.

Will you be getting a FreeSync monitor?

If not then i would go with one of these, it's faster than the 750TI.

If you intend to get a FreeSync monitor, then i would go with one of these. It will trade blows with the 750TI.

If you intend to get a FreeSync monitor and want to run games at high/ultra settings at 1080P i would highly recommend one of these. £50 over your budget, but you're putting a lot more tussle in your muscle.

By the way, i owned a R7 260X and they overclock like crazy. Here's a 3D Mark Firestrike of a 260X (same as 360X) vs a 750Ti vs a 6850.
 
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I won't be buying a monitor. This build is a HTPC/Steam gaming box for the living room. It will be hooked upto a 40" 1080p TV.

It's also a mini itx build, so I need to take into consideration size and heat dispensation.

So far I have selected an MSI A88X Mini ITX motherboard, I ordered a Silverstone ML05 case but will have to return it if I decide to go for a discreet GPU. I also ordered a 300w PSU, which should be enough for this build bu thinking of returning it and getting a 450w psu.

Now I have to decide whether to keep this APU chip or return and get a Athlon 860x and either a 750ti or 270x, I think the 750ti would be better as it produces less heat.
 
lemonade said:
Now I have to decide whether to keep this APU chip or return and get a Athlon 860x and either a 750ti or 270x, I think the 750ti would be better as it produces less heat.
Click to expand...
But the 750Ti's lower power-consumption is at the cost of being slower than the 270x by a fair margin, so it's really be up to you to decide how to weight heatoutput against performance.

IMO, the heat output of the 270x would not be an issue in the mitx case anyway, so it would make more sense to go for performance over heat output.
 
If heat output is a concern go with the 260X. They run very cool and quiet and trade blows with the 750TI. :)
 
Marine-RX179 said:
But the 750Ti's lower power-consumption is at the cost of being slower than the 270x by a fair margin, so it's really be up to you to decide how to weight heatoutput against performance.

IMO, the heat output of the 270x would not be an issue in the mitx case anyway, so it would make more sense to go for performance over heat output.
Click to expand...



True that, the heat issue probably wont be a big thing in the grander scheme of things.

I've had a bit of a medium brainwave, it looks like the 7870k CPU and the 860k are pretty much on par with each other in performance, so I could keep that and then I can recycle and use the HD6850 from my main rig in the future with the mini ITX build, then replace the 6850 with a modern equivalent for my main rig. I'll still need to return the case and psu either way.

Decisions, decisions... <_<
 
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