Thinking about AMD for low cost, what can I get away with?

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

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6 Sep 2005
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Hi guys

I'm looking for some basic components to:
Record footage off the TV/Radio, including HD broadcasts
Play some casual games on
Potentially be a media hub and stream video to other devices

All I need is:
CPU (would I need an additional CPU cooler or are the bundled ones quiet enough?)
Motherboard
RAM

I have an old machine already and have tried recording HD footage and the machine just couldn't cope which I was quite surprised about, it was a Intel C2D 6600 with 8GB RAM, so it would have to pack a bit more of a wallop than that old system!

I have all the other bits already including a 450W power supply.


What would you guys recommend? I haven't used AMD since I had a K6 200 so I'm a bit out of date! :D


Thanks!
 
What resolution will you be playing your casual games at? If you you are not playing anything too demanding then a Athlon X4 860K or A8-7650K APU will do, 8GB ram, whatever FM2+ motherboard you can afford and you should be good to go.

But to be honest, you really should be looking at the Intel route, better performance at a cost which may go beyond your budget.
 
Thanks for the reply, I should have elaborated on the casual aspect!

For now it's just going to be a secondary machine so things like Clicker Heroes, absolutely nothing graphic intensive.

Thinking about it though, down the line, it may have to be as a gaming machine, the native resolution of the monitor it would use would be 1920x1200, so maybe something that could be run games on that....nothing massively graphic intensive, just for some light relief really!

Since I made the post I have been looking into it more and using the Andantech CPU benchmark graphs, it seems that even my old i7 3770K is outperforming some of the top AMDs which I was really surprised at, so I think you're right to say maybe I should be looking at Intel still.

It'll have to be quad core I think whatever I look at, I wonder if I could get away with an i3 or need to move up to an i5...

ARGH, I'm so out of touch with computers these days!
 
most of the intel i3/i5/i7 based processors perform... largely within a few percent of each other with a very pedestrian bit of tweaking/overclocking. They have fairly similar headroom (so while a 6500K is faster than a 2500k at stock speeds, they'll both reach similar clock speeds when overclocking and not be massively different in performance).

amd's chips are a bit cheaper, have slightly better onboard graphics and more cores but performance per core is quite a bit behind the intel chips.

for casual gaming at some point, an i3 would likely be enough (considering that an i5 is considered a "good" gaming chip and an i7 is general perceived as overkill for just gaming).

At the same time for casual gaming, a higher end AMD APU might well cover your needs as far as graphics go and be a tidier little setup for media/under TV duties.
 
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'I have an old machine already and have tried recording HD footage '
what capture card are you using what connections does it use??

I suspect it doesn't have onboard hardware encoding thats why cpu cant handle HD

Potentially be a media hub and stream video to other devices - its called file sharing your current pc can handle this (unless you want to use plex and transcoding), depending upon the playback devices you may need to install dlna software.

If the current machine can play Clicker Heroes look at getting a decent capture card first
 
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Thanks for your replies everyone, that's really helpful!


Mercutio said:
most of the intel i3/i5/i7 based processors perform... largely within a few percent of each other with a very pedestrian bit of tweaking/overclocking. They have fairly similar headroom (so while a 6500K is faster than a 2500k at stock speeds, they'll both reach similar clock speeds when overclocking and not be massively different in performance).

amd's chips are a bit cheaper, have slightly better onboard graphics and more cores but performance per core is quite a bit behind the intel chips.

for casual gaming at some point, an i3 would likely be enough (considering that an i5 is considered a "good" gaming chip and an i7 is general perceived as overkill for just gaming).

At the same time for casual gaming, a higher end AMD APU might well cover your needs as far as graphics go and be a tidier little setup for media/under TV duties.
Click to expand...


Ah ha! Well...thinking about it, for a while, a few months I would imagine (without going into a life story), the main machine I have now will be elsewhere so for everyday gaming, maybe an i5 would be a good way to go!

Would something like this be a good compromise do you think? The chip itself doesn't seem to be on the Andantech benchmarks so I'll have to look into it further but the price for the punch it provides seems reasonable.



lude1962 said:
'I have an old machine already and have tried recording HD footage '
what capture card are you using what connections does it use??

I suspect it doesn't have onboard hardware encoding thats why cpu cant handle HD

Potentially be a media hub and stream video to other devices - its called file sharing your current pc can handle this (unless you want to use plex and transcoding), depending upon the playback devices you may need to install dlna software.

If the current machine can play Clicker Heroes look at getting a decent capture card first
Click to expand...

It's a Black Gold dual DVB-T tuner, it worked perfectly in the original machine so I think it does have the grunt to do it, unless it was offloading to the CPU...

My i7 3770K is running Windows 10 (no Windows Media Centre) and the other options I've tried, Kodi, NextPVR, MythTV etc., don't seem to pick up all the channels and are very flaky, hence wanting a second machine running WMC on W7, it just works!


APM said:
There's a new Zen CPU coming soon from AMD I think?
Click to expand...
Unfortunately not until Q4 this year!
 
2500k's go for about £60 on the members market. Boards are a bit harder to find now but there's bundles pop up (board, chip+ram for £100 isn't uncommon). You can't really fault the price unless you're after a "next to free" kind of setup :)
 
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