Critique My AMD Build

[lifeonrice]

Is my build good enough for a $640 budget build? I am planning to go for gaming, video editing, and regular daily internet usage.

- Corsair Air Series A50 Performance CPU Cooler - $29.99
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003IT6RDE/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

- Western Digital Caviar Blue 500 GB SATA III Hard Drive - $74.99
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00461G3MS/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

- GIGABYTE GA-970A-D3 AM3+ Motherboard - $89.99
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0056G10WK/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

- Antec VP-450 450W Power Supply (Energy Star Certified) - $36.75
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004IZN3K2/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?ie=UTF8&m=A1XBPHGHAXLHDG

- ASUS Radeon HD 6850 DC/2DIS/1GD5/V2 1GB GDDR5 Video Card - $149.99
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004IMF1IM/ref=ox_sc_act_title_5?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

- AMD FX-8120 8-Core Black Edition Processor - $159.99
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005UBNKZG/ref=ox_sc_act_title_6?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

- Antec One Gaming Computer Case - $49.99
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006TVQU6C/ref=ox_sc_act_title_7?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

- Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1600Mhz DDR3 SDRAM - $47.99
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004CRSM4I/ref=ox_sc_act_title_8?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER
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Total: $639.68 + Free Shipping + No Tax
I have already bought Windows 7 Home Premium and an ASUS DVD Drive that I bought from my friend.

Are all the parts safe or capable for overclocking my video card and processor?
If you have a better recommendation, please give me a parts list? (Amazon only)

*I will also be using a 1920x1080 Monitor

Thanks

 

[Peettreedish]

I would step up the power abit to maybe 650w. There is a good article here on the main page about the performance of ram with that particular CPU.

 

[Outlander_04]

You dont need a larger psu with that build

but check newegg prices. They may be better .

The 6850 is Ok for gaming at 1080p resolution , but you wont get highest detail settings . If you compromise on the cpu and get an X6 you can afford a better graphics card . 6870's cost about $10 more and the step in performance is worth it .

 

[lifeonrice]

You dont need a larger psu with that build

but check newegg prices. They may be better .

The 6850 is Ok for gaming at 1080p resolution , but you wont get highest detail settings . If you compromise on the cpu and get an X6 you can afford a better graphics card . 6870's cost about $10 more and the step in performance is worth it .

I also do video editing, an fx 8120 is as close as an i5 2500k but $60 cheaper. Also, newegg charges tax for my city

 

[Outlander_04]

I'd still try and find the extra for a 6870 .

You could use the stock cooler for the time being . It works well , and even let you overclock reasonably

 

[skidawgz]

If I'm not mistaken you will have better results with the CPU over the i5-2500k
Multi-core programs such as video editing should perform better with the 8 cores. I have seen a thread where someone benchmarks both, but can't find both.

The 6870 is worth the extra few bucks. HOWEVER.... i think I have once read that nVidia cards can sometimes perform better for video encoding. I built a hexacore i7 PC for a friend and he bought a Quadro, but I remember GeForce models being named for a runner up.

 

[lifeonrice]

Well the HD 6850 i'm getting is the same price as of a stock hd 6850. it's clocked at 790mhz and can be overclockable because of the directcu technology by asus

 

[oxiide]

If I'm not mistaken you will have better results with the CPU over the i5-2500k
Multi-core programs such as video editing should perform better with the 8 cores. I have seen a thread where someone benchmarks both, but can't find both.

If all eight cores are in heavy use, the 8120 might achieve parity with/become just slightly faster than the i5-2500K. Any other time, the 8120 is only competing with i3's or older Intel processors.

Granted, if the OP knows that and still wants it, that's his business as far as I'm concerned.

I would recommend a Thuban Phenom II X6 over any of the FX line, personally, for their better IPC and six true cores (rather than four Bulldozer "modules").

The 6870 is worth the extra few bucks. HOWEVER.... i think I have once read that nVidia cards can sometimes perform better for video encoding. I built a hexacore i7 PC for a friend and he bought a Quadro, but I remember GeForce models being named for a runner up.

Nvidia cards may perform better if the specific application being used has support for CUDA, in which case it may be worth going with a 560 Ti. If there's no need for CUDA, it won't matter. As far as raw price/performance, Nvidia has nothing on the market to match the HD 6870 and it remains a fantastic value card for 1080p gaming.

 

[lifeonrice]

If all eight cores are in heavy use, the 8120 might achieve parity with/become just slightly faster than the i5-2500K. Any other time, the 8120 is only competing with i3's or older Intel processors.

Granted, if the OP knows that and still wants it, that's his business as far as I'm concerned.

I would recommend a Thuban Phenom II X6 over any of the FX line, personally, for their better IPC and six true cores (rather than four Bulldozer "modules").


Nvidia cards may perform better if the specific application being used has support for CUDA, in which case it may be worth going with a 560 Ti. If there's no need for CUDA, it won't matter. As far as raw price/performance, Nvidia has nothing on the market to match the HD 6870 and it remains a fantastic value card for 1080p gaming.

The 1090T and the 1100T are deactivated, but i would prefer going with the FX processors because it's future proof

 

[fancarolina]

I would suggest you go to one of the Western Digital Black series or RE Series drives as they offer a 5yr warranty as opposed to the Blue/Green series 2yr. Additionally Black Series offer 32mb and RE Series offer 64mb of Cache.

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Internal-Desktop/dp/B004DMFAJ2/ref=pd_cp_e_3
$16.88 more then the drive you selected for twice the Cache and twice the Warranty.

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Cache-Enterprise-Drive/dp/B003SALVN4/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1338779768&sr=1-1
$18.01 to get WDs Enterprise class RE4 drive with 64mb of Cache.

All hard drives fail. It's not a matter of if it's a matter of when. You might as well plan accordingly. Ask yourself how often do you want to buy a new hard drive, then ask yourself if you can afford $20 now to be able to let WD fix it for another 3 yrs. I think you will find it's worth the extra cost, oh yea and the extra performance from the additional cache thats nice too.

As for graphics, I'm not quite sure why your not picking the Radeon 7770 cards. They should be quicker and cooler then the 6000 series cards. A quick glance at benchmarks suggests it's as fast as the 6800 series and is clocked higher from the beginning.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Radeon+7770

 

[skidawgz]

If all eight cores are in heavy use, the 8120 might achieve parity with/become just slightly faster than the i5-2500K. Any other time, the 8120 is only competing with i3's or older Intel processors.

Granted, if the OP knows that and still wants it, that's his business as far as I'm concerned.

I would recommend a Thuban Phenom II X6 over any of the FX line, personally, for their better IPC and six true cores (rather than four Bulldozer "modules").


Nvidia cards may perform better if the specific application being used has support for CUDA, in which case it may be worth going with a 560 Ti. If there's no need for CUDA, it won't matter. As far as raw price/performance, Nvidia has nothing on the market to match the HD 6870 and it remains a fantastic value card for 1080p gaming.

You are right but you are seeing everything through the mind of a gamer. The i5 is faster for gaming but he/she will be using the chip for other things as well! An FX chip will very easily run games, and you are right about the value of those AMD cards but for gaming only. I am actually not biased to either Intel AMD nor nVidia and just believe in purchasing whatever is right at the time. So no fanboi bias here.

I'm almost certain the FX outperforms the intel due to the increase in cores. I am not sure what the best gfx card is so I am suggesting the OP does some research. The QUADRO cards are for video encoding, and most gamers have no idea they even exist. They are however, not for gaming that is why.

 

[Guest]

The 1090T and the 1100T are deactivated, but i would prefer going with the FX processors because it's future proof

Oh really?

that is quite astonishing considering AMD has given up competing with intel on the high end front . . .

 

[fancarolina]

I would like to hope by future proof he is meaning the AM3+ socket in the hopes he can place another processor on there down the road. Though I would hesitate to call anything in the computer world future proof. As for the FX line in benchmarks they might not be quite as fast as the Intel high end offerings. They are a fraction of the price and I'd bet in the real world you'd be hard pressed to be displeased with their performance.

Oh really?

that is quite astonishing considering AMD has given up competing with intel on the high end front . . .

 

[Guest]

I would like to hope by future proof he is meaning the AM3+ socket in the hopes he can place another processor on there down the road. Though I would hesitate to call anything in the computer world future proof. As for the FX line in benchmarks they might not be quite as fast as the Intel high end offerings. They are a fraction of the price and I'd bet in the real world you'd be hard pressed to be displeased with their performance.

AFAIK, the fx-8120 is the end of the line. though my bad for not noticing the AM3+ socket. good catch.

 

[oxiide]

You are right but you are seeing everything through the mind of a gamer. The i5 is faster for gaming but he/she will be using the chip for other things as well! An FX chip will very easily run games, and you are right about the value of those AMD cards but for gaming only. I am actually not biased to either Intel AMD nor nVidia and just believe in purchasing whatever is right at the time. So no fanboi bias here.

I understand what you're saying, but I wasn't just talking about games. As I said, when all eight cores are in use, it may sometimes (depending on the app) match, be slightly faster, or remain behind an i5. The IPC difference is great enough that eight cores are not always enough to make the difference.

ex: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8150-zambezi-bulldozer-990fx,3043-17.html

While it may shave off < 10 seconds in some apps versus an i5, I'm not convinced that's enough to make it a smart purchase for people seriously needing multithreading; they want i7's. If the OP just wants to encode some video occasionally while being a gamer most of the time, it would be smarter to go Intel and just suffer through those extra ~5 seconds or so.

But like I said, if he understands that and still wants an FX-8120, that's his business.

The 1090T and the 1100T are deactivated, but i would prefer going with the FX processors because it's future proof

There's really no such thing as a "future proof" platform today. Piledriver may or may not use the same socket as Bulldozer, and even if it does, your pre-Piledriver motherboard still may or may not support Piledriver CPU's. Some boards may only support them after a BIOS update, some may never. I would strongly recommend not making a CPU choice based on an assumption of what you might be able to upgrade to.

Its safer to just go on the assumption that you'll use this board for the next 2-3 years at least, and that a new PC will need a complete rebuild. And if you end up able to upgrade, great.

 

[Outlander_04]

AFAIK, the fx-8120 is the end of the line. though my bad for not noticing the AM3+ socket. good catch.

Indeed you should not just be happy . You should be ecstatic .

The AMD roadmap is quite clear . Piledriver cpu's may be available later this year . The cores already are in APU's

and further enhancements are going to be introduced for another couple of years on the same socket .

Better still is this article
techreport.com/articles.x/21865
Bulldozer architecture has the potential to perform 20% better with a revised scheduler and/or windows 8 . With the added improvements of PD its going to potentially beat intels IB across the board .

 

[lifeonrice]

FX 8120 for $160 is really worth it compared to a $220 i5 2500k. I just want something that can let me play on a 1600x900 (maybe a 1920x1080p). Also, i'm going to get a Sapphire HD 6870. I am going to record and edit game montages.

 

[oxiide]

Bulldozer architecture has the potential to perform 20% better with a revised scheduler and/or windows 8 . With the added improvements of PD its going to potentially beat intels IB across the board .

My usual response to this is "show me." I can't speak for the OP here, but I want to see it happening consistently on reputable review sites before I throw money at it. As far as I'm concerned, the burden of proof is on AMD after several years of this cyclical hype-disappointment nonsense.

And with AMD themselves claiming they no longer see themselves in competition with Intel for desktop performance, I don't think it looks good.

 

[lifeonrice]

Will a Corsair CX500 PSU be able to overclock both CPU and GPU?

 

[farsuka]

For this price range, get a hyper 212 evo instead.
http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-Hyper-212-RR-212E-20PK-R2/dp/B005O65JXI

 

[Outlander_04]

My usual response to this is "show me." I can't speak for the OP here, but I want to see it happening consistently on reputable review sites before I throw money at it. As far as I'm concerned, the burden of proof is on AMD after several years of this cyclical hype-disappointment nonsense.

And with AMD themselves claiming they no longer see themselves in competition with Intel for desktop performance, I don't think it looks good.

Show me where AMD said that

 

[Guest]

The AMD roadmap is quite clear.

And with AMD themselves claiming they no longer see themselves in competition with Intel for desktop performance, I don't think it looks good.

Show me where AMD said that

There is no interest at AMD to continue a processor war with Intel that has lasted decades, but only rewarded AMD with occasional superiority.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-intel-cpu-apu-processors,15741.html
pretty clear, huh?

 

[Peettreedish]

Honestly I think you just forget the eight core. The 8150 is by design a 6 core with to virtual cores. Just get the 6 core model and save a few more bucks.

 

[oxiide]

There is no interest at AMD to continue a processor war with Intel that has lasted decades, but only rewarded AMD with occasional superiority.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-intel-cpu-apu-processors,15741.html
pretty clear, huh?

^^^^ This, thanks.

The 8150 is by design a 6 core with to virtual cores. Just get the 6 core model and save a few more bucks.

The 8150 has four Bulldozer modules, each able to process two threads in parallel, sorta like Hyperthreading. Though in fairness it is a bit better than what that implies.

 

[azeem40]

As for the CX500, it really isn't a good PSU. It doesn't even supply the wattage in its 12v rail. For example, the CX600 only outputs 520W. I am not getting involved in this argument.