Llana A8 pc for my girlfriend

[Mariusmssj]

Hello guys,
well my girlfriend really wants to play pc games but her pc can't run anything so i decided to build her one.

After doing a bit of searching i came to a conclusion that getting an
AMD Llano A8-3850 2.90GHz £99.98 inc VAT
and
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 6670 1024MB GDDR5 £74.99 inc VAT
would allow me to get her a quite good gaming pc.

Do you guys agree with me or do you think it won't be any good for PC gaming?

thanks

 

[Mariusmssj]

nah i'll be getting it from scratch but as i read some reviews the A8-3850 is not too good of an idea for gaming tbh "/
now i suck between the i5 or AMD Phenom II X4

 

[Mariusmssj]

The A8 Llano is basically an Athlon chip with a 6550D. If you plan to get the 6670 then you might as well get this CPU: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-280-AM&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1943

However the A8 with it's built in 6550D should be more than enough for your girlfriend.

well she wants to play crysis 2, witcher 2, assassins creed and the battlefield 3 ;S i know high ambitions xD

so is the L3 cache the only different between the X4 8XX and 9XX series?

edit only needs the box i am getting her mob and cpu she is paying for the rest but she wants to keep it low

 

[Mariusmssj]

... Looks like I underestimated her gaming habits!

If she wants to keep it low then go for this:

Intel Core i3-3100 3.10GHz (£94.99):
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-367-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1671

MSI H61M-P23 Intel H61 (£44.99):
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-178-MS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1965

If you look here then you can see against the 955, in game the 2100 matches or even outperform it when gaming. The 2100 with the 6670 should do nicely, but maybe if you can stretch to this 460 then it should be able to play the latest games with no problems, but not on max settings.

hmm great stuff there, i am worried that the dual core wouldn't cause a bottleneck for the 460 =/

 

[Mariusmssj]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxlQLzOCxEc&list=UUXuqSBlHAE6Xw-yeJA0Tunw&index=71

That shows Llano performance in games with a cheap 6series card in a hybrid crossfire mode type mode, you can also see the llano performance without the card written down.

And theres more here - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/A8-3850_Fusion_GPU_Performance/13.html

You also get native SATA3.0 and USB3.0 with Llano.

she has a 1080 monitor =/ so i gues apu is not much of an option

 

[Mariusmssj]

well if i get her an i5 i can't buy the mobo for her "/

btw when is the ivy bridge out?

 

[Mariusmssj]

well after reading This it seems that i3 is more than enough actually but now do i get 1156 or the 1155 sandy???

 

[Mariusmssj]

Thanks guys for the help i bought her an i3-2100 3.10GHz and Gigabyte H61M-S2V-B3

now i need to find the rest of the specs so she could buy the parts so i need ram, psu and a good gpu she will pick the case herself.
for ram i was thinking Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C8 1333MHz £29.99 inc VAT and F3 1TB for the hardrive
now i'm not too sure about what GPU and PSU to get her :S