A6-3500 or Phenom II x4

[bilalasd]

Hey guys,
So I am building a budget gaming PC and I have picked everything accept for the CPU
I cant decide between A6-3500 or Phenom x4 black edition. I am going to buy a Radeon hd 6670.
So if I buy the apu I can do a cross fire which gives better graphics in some games but the apu also has a slower speed.
My priorities are that it should be able to play the recent games like skyrim and mw3 on atleast medium setting.

 

[xaira]

medium no low yes, the 6770 can only be crossfired with the a8 series, bearing in mind that the 3500 is 2.1ghz, i would recommend a higher clocked x4 with the 6670, another factor is what res you plan to play at

 

[bilalasd]

it is possible to do a hybrid crossfire using the a6 series and the 6670.
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/45050-amd-a6-3650-llano-apu-review-6.html

 

[xaira]

thats odd, saw another slide somewhere and the first 2 numbers of the gpus had to be identical for it to work, anyway, the 2.1ghz is still kind of low

 

[need4speeds]

I am running a A6-3650 apu, stock is 2.6ghz 1.40volts, arctic cooling 13 pro, 3.51ghz 1.45volts, 31C prime95+furmark+playing a 1080p video stream at the same time test.
Gigabyte Ga-A75M-UD2H, micro atx crossfire. Hd-4870's 800/1050(770/1000 stock). X-fi pci card that luckily misses most of the 1st card's fan. You must manually set the memory voltage, timings. The speed is set to 1066mhz because it follows the fsb and ends up at 1470mhz with the fsb at 135.
The pci, pcie, ht bus also follows the fsb. The pci bus resets after 133mhz so at 135 it is reset. 132 wont boot for example but 135 does. It resets again at 166 which wont ever work. My board maxes out at 243mhz with the multi dropped to 24 from 26. This model of board is known to be a good overclocker, it was also in a tom's board test. Some fm1 boards are poor overclockers so be careful which board you pick.

The A6-3650 is a quad core. The A6-3500 is only a tri-core. I wouldn't get that apu at all.

I found the A6-3650 to be pretty good and fast enough for the hd-4870's.
The A8 would be a bit better.

You best bet is to get the A8-3850 instead and a crossfire board. I wouldn't bother with dual graphics.
The A8 has a 400 shader gpu that is good enough to play games on for a while. Later on you can buy hd-6770's or the hd-7770 replacement. Or a single card with more shaders.

I tried the A6 integrated gpu out, games like dirt2 ran at med-high details,winxp-pro dx9.0c, 1080p, 25fps.. Nothing great, but enough to play the game. The hd-4870's run maxed out details, 1080p, 8xaa/af, 117fps for comparison.

 

[need4speeds]

I bought 1600mhz mem on sale but i knew i was not going to be running the integrated gpu for graphics. If you want to use the integrated gpu as a video card, it is best to get faster memory.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/llano-apu-a75-motherboard,3008-8.html

 

[bilalasd]

Xaira: I know its pretty low that why I was having second thought about buying it... I was more leaning towards the phenom.

need4speeds: I dont have much room in my budget for an a8... its either a6 or phenom ii x4. I think I'll go with the phenom since it has more speed and its more clockable.

 

[xaira]

why dont you just get an x4 645, its only $99?

 

[HostileDonut]

Well, the Phenom II X4 is going a lot faster and the extra GPU Power won't be much. Also, the Phenom II X4 has good overclocking potential. Grab the PII.

 

[JohnK11]

fyi--Skyrim is barely adequate on a A8-3500 laptop

(my $499/on-sale Gateway NV55S05u A8-3500 6GB/640GB HD
laptop plays Skyrim at 20 fps at the laptop's native res (1366x768)
with medium effects (8 samples in AA/Anis, High in Texture, Shadow,
Decal, Distance, Medium in Radial and FXAA off).