Kaveri build vs Athlon x4 760k and GPU

WhiteSnake91

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Am I missing anything by going with an Athlon x4 760k and r7 260x instead of Kaveri 7850k?

For the same price of the Kaveri 7850k I could get an Athlon x4 760k and at LEAST an r7 260x brand new, I could get an r9 270x used for the same price the r7 260x (rebranded HD7790) costs. I haven't kept up much with Kaveri, have been reading some on them. I want to build a portable small LAN pc, and it's a shame there's no mini itx AM3+ mobos, and the micro atx AM3+ mobos seem to really suck and would throttle and wouldn't be able to overclock an fx 6300 or fx 8320 =/

Apparently the big thing with Kaveri was the ~r7 250ish level gpu built in, as well as later on getting support for the HSA. Would HSA even matter in games? I'm not planning on playing anything CPU intensive...mostly BF4(plus getting FPS boost with Mantle) or Minecraft on it, and daily browsing the web,etc.

The steamroller CPUs have a tiny bit better IPC than Trinity/Richland but are also clocked lower, so any performance gains are pretty much mute since Trinity/Richland can clock higher out of the box and then you can account overclocking.

I suppose I'm a little paranoid of the GPU failing, and with no built in graphics for backup, the pc would be unusable until the replacement GPU came in.

here's my build so far for the Kaveri

Cpu- Kaveri A10-7850k APU -$170
Gpu- N/A
Ram- 2400mhz ram G.Skill Ares- $80
Mobo- MSI A88Xi AC m-ITX motherboard mini ITX - $90
HDD- WD Blue 1tb 7200rpm HDD- 60
PSU- Corsair builder 430w -40(20 rebate?)
Case- Fractal Design Node 304- $100

total= $540 plus whatever the OS costs....I heard going with W8.1 is better for AMD CPUs

going with the $80 Athlon x4 760k would actually be cheaper, I already have 8gb ddr3 laying around and the speed wouldn't matter since there's no integrated graphics. I could also save 60 by going with an old HDD laying around. I could also save 50 bucks and just go with the Cooler Master Elite 130 case, it just doesn't have large cpu heatsink support since the power supply sits right above the motherboard.


Anybody have experience first hand with Kaveri APUs? Would it be better to just go Athlon x4 760k on a cheaper FM2+ mobo?

urgh it pains me seeing how expensive that ram is.....I bought my old Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz ram 8gb set at the end of 2012 for only 39 dollars...prices have pretty much doubled on ram since then >_>
 

Pondering

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Dec 7, 2013
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I like the integrated graphics for troubleshooting. I use APUs with discrete graphics cards though.

I bought ballistix sports recently and then found that I could have gotten the Vengeance 1600mhz ram for the same price since the full heatsink makes them so much easier to install T>T