A8+6570 or Athlon II X2 260+7770?

Phenom II x4 965 with a 7770 will be better option.

just pulling CPU's out of thin air, eh? He said he has a Athlon II x2 260, not a Phenom II quad.....

What Gen of APU?
Personally, I'd hop on to an A10 system with IGP and 1866mhz RAM  
BTW, why ask between these 2? Do you already have some parts or still in the early stages of building it?

id take an A8 and 7770.

dude....get a bigger monitor.....your resolutions is meant for a 13'......you are down-grading your performance.

I can see that. I post my advice to get a phenom II for better performance. A10 is not a bad choice though.

But with a8 you can use dual graphics with a 6570, right? Screen resolution is something that I don't care about, as long as it's above 1024x768. Can you use dual graphics/crossfire with a single monitor? Will the Regor bottleneck the 7770? The store does not sell Phenoms

I have memory and some other stuff though. I would not get a FX because it would need a BIOS update on most motherboards still.

Sorry for bad grammar, I am writing on a mobile device

What about a Athlon II X4 631 with a 7770? Which of the three is the best combo for a single monitor & which is the most value for money? I will be playing Team Fortress 2 mostly and NFS Most Wanted (original).

For those games, athlon and 7770 is fine. But you can get a FX-4150 and all latest mob has bios for fx cpu. Even 760g comes with FX supported bios.

Can you please give us a budget maybe? There are other options out there. For instance some games uses mainly two cores / some games simply rely on a more efficient architecture (could also be explained as a higher clock for clock or per core performance depending on the situation I suppose)

I can't find much info on that x4 either but if its really just a A8 minus the GPU then an i3 or G680 would be much better for games that don't take advantage of all the cores. (it also opens the door for an i5 later on)

I just don't really see a compelling reason to grab something on the FM2 socket when you are going to be using a dedicated GPU.

That being said mubin is exactly correct. your Athlon + 7770 will max out those games with no sweat at all. I have/had an Athlon 2 x3 455 + 5670 and I was easily able to max out both of those. And for the money/longevity of the system you might think about something from the FX/phenom line with an AM3+ board.

/shrug just throwing around ideas and options.

Sorry if anything is mispelled/hard to read. Its 4 AM and I haven't slept yet  

Edit: reread the thread and can't find where an Athlon 2 740 was mentioned... Sorry for giving irrelevant info. I really suggest simply not buying an athlon 2 x2 its just not worth the price compared to an intel pentium G proc. Can probably find a pentium G + mobo for around 120 making it very cost effective.

Black socket am3+ motherboards support fx bulldozer/piledriver, correct?
Also Athlon and 7770 vs dual graphics a8 and 6570? If you dual graphics can you still use 1 monitor?

Depends on mobo chip. Not all black socket mobo supports all piledriver/bulldozer cpu. Like 760g dosent.

the 7770 is the much better option. And get the best CPU you can afford after that. I suggest a Athlon x3 at least since 2 cores are hitting the end of usefulness for gamers these days.

My choice is limited; I cannot order online 3-core or Phenoms (like I want to) because I am overseas and the posting system is terrible, and I cannot afford to wait at least a MONTH for it to arrive. My local store has these in stock:
Dual core 260 and 270
Sempron 145
Sandy Bridge Celerons and Pentiums
Ivy Bridge Celerons and Pentiums
Ivy Bridge Core i3 is the most I can afford, and BARELY (yes, barely)
Bulldozer and Piledriver FX
Whole range of FM2 APUs (except for the cheaper version of the a8 and a10)
Quad-core 631 FM1 (I'm particularly interested in buying this as it costs less than a Celeron and so is the mobo.)
7750, GTX 650 and 7770

So, which CPU and GPU is the most value?

I will get a 631 if there's stock left, but otherwise 7750 or lower will have to do because Bulldozer means a 970 or higher. And that means higher cost.
Also, I found this AsRock 880GM-LE-FX which is a white socket motherboard but says "8-Core Ready".

IMPORTANT: Will a 970 chipset natively support Piledriver?

Thanks everyone!

Best answer selected by Matsushima.

Sorry I somehow missed this comment when it was posted..

The 880GM board you listed doesn't natively support the FX procs but I went through the BIOS updates and it seems there are quite a few. They don't even have the FX on there supported CPUs list though... hmmm

and yes the 970 chipset natively supports PD/BD

Thanks again everyone, built an Athlon II 270 (631 was out of stock) system with the 7770 and overclocked it, runs TF2 well and satisfied, although I could have bought a better quality motherboard. All under $400-might upgrade to Piledriver/i3 in 1-2 years