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AMD A8 + good discrete graphics card for future? (no Crossfire)

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Will it get good results? I've recently purchased a pre-made custom rig, and it contains an a8 3850 apu. I'm on a budget so it seemed like the best choice for the moment. I'm wondering though, if I may be able to upgrade the gpu (disabling the onboard gpu) some time in the future and keep up with the times? Or will I have to get rid of the a8 completely and start fresh with a new cpu and gpu?

More about : amd good discrete graphics card future crossfire

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You will be able to upgrade with some success, but it will depend on what you are trying to do at the time. The a8 3850 is able to meet the minimum system requirements of pretty much everything right now, it will depend what and why you are upgrading. The main thing to watch out for is to check the wattage of your power supply to make sure it can handle the gpu that you will be looking at. Worse case scenario, you'll just want to upgrade the power supply when you upgrade the gpu.

I wouldn't worry about getting rid of it if you don't plan on maxing AA @ 1080p or higher. If you just want to game with it decently it'll last a good while. I still play League of Legends on a Amd 4400+ in my guestroom at 40 FPS np but is being held back by the CPU, Swapping from a 4850 to a 5770 made no difference in it.

That being said. Figure out where you bottleneck at GPU wise and don't invest more than that in your rigs GPU. Either way you'll game well now, even with a HD 7750 if that's all you can afford (with AA off @ 1080p that is).

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Graphics card Expert

a good high end graphics card means a 7900 series.

but man your A8 will bottle neck any any high end card's performance.

Remember that the A8 is basically a stripped down Phenom II to begin with, So it's not exactly a screamer. In terms of performance it's on par with the old Intel Kentsfield quad cores. So in CPU heavy games, it's going to bottleneck anything faster than say a Radeon 6870 or GTX 460. You likely will not see the full benefit of a Radeon 7900 series.

it will be better for you to get a good CPU first then a high end graphics card.
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I'm gaming on this thing and want to be able to play recent games like dead space 3 on med-high without problems. At the moment I'm only using the a8 with 4gb of ram. I'm sure that's not going to take me very far, will additional ram help? I'm fairly new at pc gaming and wanted this one to be my first endeavor. My concern is mainly if I'll have to get rid of the APu and having to drop down money for a CPU and Gpu.
Graphics card Expert

faster ram > more ram, if you're using onboard graphics.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-bandwidth-sc...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-bandwidth-sc...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-bandwidth-sc...

if you're using a discrete card like the 7770, ram speed and size isn't going to affect performance by a lot.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-bandwidth-la...

depending on the resolution you're playing at, med-high isn't going to be a major problem for most games.... at 720p. at 1080p, you're likely to see less fps at medium in some games, and may have to drop to low in the more demanding titles. through the year(s), it's going to get much worse.

Hazle said:
faster ram > more ram, if you're using onboard graphics.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-bandwidth-sc...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-bandwidth-sc...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-bandwidth-sc...

if you're using a discrete card like the 7770, ram speed and size isn't going to affect performance by a lot.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-bandwidth-la...

depending on the resolution you're playing at, med-high isn't going to be a major problem for most games.... at 720p. at 1080p, you're likely to see less fps at medium in some games, and may have to drop to low in the more demanding titles. through the year(s), it's going to get much worse.


Im going to be playing at 1080p, but have no problem going 720p using my lcd tv. I was going to acquire a super talent 4gb stick of ddr3 ram for $16, will that help?
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