AMD FX 4100 & AMD HD Radeon 7870?

[Soturi]

Hello.

I'm building a gaming PC on a budget, and I'm wondering, will the AMD FX 4100 and the AMD HD Radeon 7870 be good, or will the 4100 bottleneck the 7870?

I'd also like to be enlightened on "bottlenecking". I mean, I don't understand what games are more CPU intensive than others, what games prefer (I've heard the 4100 is good because it has a high clock frequency @ 3.6GHz), and I don't understand how to know if a specific CPU will bottleneck a specific gfx card.

Please enlighten me.

Thank you.

 

[FinneousPJ]

It should be fine. However some games don't like the FX, SC2 comes to mind...

 

[samuelspark]

4100 will bottleneck.

Bottlenecking is where the FPS in a game is limited by one component but not the other.

So, lets say, in SC2, an i5 2500k is capable of achieving 100 fps (assume that games could run without GPU's), and a 6770 is capable of 70 fps (assume computers could only run on CPU's) . So with an i5 2500k + 6770 configuration, SC2 would only run at 70 fps even though the CPU can run it at 100 fps. The game is limited by the graphics card.

This is the situation with your CPU and GPU.
The FX-4100 is the worst quad core in the last two generations (including this one).
The 7870 is a pretty powerful card, almost equal to the 580. When you play a game, the maximum FPS would be limited by your CPU. So, even if you got x4 690's (impossible), you would still get the same FPS as you would with your 7870 because the FPS is limited by your CPU.

 

[Soturi]

4100 will bottleneck.

Bottlenecking is where the FPS in a game is limited by one component but not the other.

So, lets say, in SC2, an i5 2500k is capable of achieving 100 fps (assume that games could run without GPU's), and a 6770 is capable of 70 fps (assume computers could only run on CPU's) . So with an i5 2500k + 6770 configuration, SC2 would only run at 70 fps even though the CPU can run it at 100 fps. The game is limited by the graphics card.

This is the situation with your CPU and GPU.
The FX-4100 is the worst quad core in the last two generations (including this one).
The 7870 is a pretty powerful card, almost equal to the 580. When you play a game, the maximum FPS would be limited by your CPU. So, even if you got x4 690's (impossible), you would still get the same FPS as you would with your 7870 because the FPS is limited by your CPU.

Hello.

Thank you for your reply, that was very helpful.

Could you tell me, how much of a bottleneck the FX 4100 will be on this card? How much fps do you think this CPU would cap, and why does it cap the fps? I mean, what's so bad about the FX CPUs, why are they not good for gaming?

Also, would I fare any better with the FX 8150 with the same card, instead?

Thanks!

//Soturi

 

[yummerzzz]

An FX4100 @ 4.5Ghz = Deneb at ~4ghz, the bottleneck should be pretty minimal though you will see better frames with a Sandybridge CPU.

 

[melikepie]

It should not be more then 5 FPS and in some cases may not even a bottleneck.

 

[samuelspark]

An FX4100 @ 4.5Ghz = Deneb at ~4ghz, the bottleneck should be pretty minimal though you will see better frames with a Sandybridge CPU.

He's running it at stock.

 

[samuelspark]

Hello.

Thank you for your reply, that was very helpful.

Could you tell me, how much of a bottleneck the FX 4100 will be on this card? How much fps do you think this CPU would cap, and why does it cap the fps? I mean, what's so bad about the FX CPUs, why are they not good for gaming?

Also, would I fare any better with the FX 8150 with the same card, instead?

Thanks!

//Soturi

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1766/1/

I don't think it'll be too major but, next time I'd go for a CPU upgrade instead of a GPU upgrade.
The FX-8120 won't offer much improvement as games solemnly use more than 4 cores.
The performance in CPU's is heavily dependent on the microarchitecture, not the clock speed.
The architecture of the FX CPU's is actually a really bad one, simply said. Even the previous generation of Phenom II outperform it and Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge have much better architectures and that creates much higher FPS.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-4100-core-i3-2100-gaming-benchmark,3136-8.html

Also, the FX cores aren't actually real cores. They're actually "half-cores" because FX operates in modules apposed to cores. Two FX cores = 1 module.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

for gaming, get away from FX cpu's. Find a cheap Phenom IIx4 or intel core i3/i5.

 

[Soul_keeper]

my llano beats the FX 4100 in most benchmarks.
that video card is loads better than that CPU.
If you got the 7850 instead and used that extra $100 toward a faster CPU you wouldn't be making a mistake imo.

 

[samuelspark]

Please pick a best answer to close the thread as it helps the mods out a lot.

 

[Soturi]

Please pick a best answer to close the thread as it helps the mods out a lot.

How do I pick a best answer? ^^'.

 

[yummerzzz]

You don't ; this is a discussion thread.

 

[samuelspark]

Oh snap. Didn't notice that. xD