Today I finally find some time to sit down and continue my blog. I apologize for being so slow but with holiday sales season, I am working late hours and then some to get caught up with work. So here I am and now without further delays, let's pick up right where we left off.
My previous post talked about the very powerful Intel lineup and some of the amazing processors they have and with the specs they have you would ask (and rightfully so!) Why go any further? Why? Well it is very simple of course! No discussion about CPUs can be complete without mentioning the wonderful line of AMD CPUs. AMD who have been the king of budget computing for a while now have a very impressive lineup as well. The current AMD family includes the entry level Semprons, Athlon IIs, A-Series APUs which combine both a GPU and a CPU on the same chip, the Phenom IIs and the newly designed FX series.
With my wish to build a gaming pc, the Semprons were knocked out of contention right away being the entry level (budget friendly) cpu for very general computing requirements. It needs a AM3 socket type motherboard and if you want a general use cpu, The fastest Sempron (2.8Ghz Sempron 145 Sargas) is selling for only $39.99.
The Athlon II also drops out of the race for being pretty much a everyday use chip as well. It will run games better then the Sempron mind you but still it's performance leaves much to be desired. One really interesting thing to note, The Athlon II line has Quad-Core CPUs for $99.99 and under! If you want a reliable Quad-Core, you can opt for the AMD Athlon II 640 Propus which is for $99.99
The A-Series is an interesting attempt by AMD. They took a CPU and a GPU and put it onto a single chip. The idea according to AMD being that it will give you more performance in a budget environment without having to resort to buying a discrete GPU. With that in mind the AMD A8-3850 has a 2.9Ghz Quad-core and a AMD Radeon HD 6550D capable of running DirectX 11. It is selling for $139.99 and requires a socket FM1 motherboard. This too was not in contention for me as it is still not as powerful as my requirements are but if you do not care about playing games in High, Ultra High settings with very high FPS (Frames per Second) then by all means you can go for this chip.
From here on out things though get more interesting.
Phenom II
Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition
Stock speed for this little beauty is 3.2Ghz but as it happens to be a Black Edition, Overclocking it is a very simple matter. As long as you have adequate cooling solution it can be overclocked up to 3.8Ghz Stable. Needs a AM3 chipset motherboard. Selling for $124.99.
Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition
This chip starts out at 3.5Ghz and you can take it anywhere from there on! As with any AMD Black Edition, Overclockers are going to be happy with these chips as AMD chips are very very easy to overclock and very stable under overclocking. This one is available for only 139.99
For $169.99, you will get the AMD Phenom II X4 980 which starts at 3.7Ghz and people have been able to overclock to a stable 4.1Ghz with a lot of ease.
Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition
The amazing, awesome Six-Core offering from AMD runs at an equally awesome 3.3Ghz speed. It requires (as usual for AMD) an AM3 motherboard to run. Also being a Black Edition, people have been known to overclock it up to 4.1Ghz with on just the multiplier alone. one of my favorite CPUs which is selling for an awesome $189.99. Yes yes, I used too many awesome but for a sub $200 six core, what other word can you use!?
The Phenom II X6 1090T is also a worthy buy. Another 6-Core offering clocking in at 3.2Ghz and you can buy it for $174.99
FX Series
AMDs newest offering carrying the beloved FX moniker. There was a lot of hype surrounding the FX series (Code named Bulldozer) and when it was released it set a overclocking world record. The current record stands at 8.58Ghz for this CPU. However reviews and benchmarks gave a different view all together. First it was not the Core i7 beater everyone was hoping it would be (It comes close to Core i5 2500-2500k in terms of performance) and second it was the fact that it took 8-Cores to come close to an Intel 4-Core. In addition, the way AMD has designed the CPU, Current and previous Windows iterations can not handle scheduling efficiently for the cores which results in lower then expected performance. However, all FX chips are unlocked and as with all AMD unlocked cpus, overclocking is easy and works like a charm.
They have released 4 Chips so far.
A 4-Core 3.6Ghz AMD FX-4100 selling for only $119.99
The second is the 6-Core, 3.3Ghz AMD FX-6100 selling for 159.99.
FX-8120
The 8XXX series is AMDs 8-Core offering. Clocking in at an amazing 3.1Ghz, this beast can be overclocked reliably to 3.9Ghz with just air cooling alone and close to 5Ghz with liquid cooling. Needs a AM3+ socket motherboard (According to what I have read, it can run on the AM3 boards as well after a BIOS update.) Selling for $209.99.
FX-8150
AMDs biggest, baddest CPU. Clocking in at 3.6Ghz, this processor jumps to 4.2Ghz when Turbo Boost comes into effect. Selling for $269.99
And there, in a nutshell, you have all of AMDs offerings which I was greatly interested in.
Now all that is left is to tell you which CPU I went with and why...... and the winner is....
The AMD FX-8120.
The options that interested me the most were the i7 2600k, Phenom II 1100T, FX8120 and FX8150. Even with all the disappointment surrounding the FX Series, I ultimately decided on 8120 for the a number of reasons. I was honestly excited about the bulldozer release and even after all the reviews and benchmarks was still interested in it. The current scheduling problems it is running into are similar to what Intel ran into when it first introduced its HT (Hyper Threading : The way Intel offers 2 Threads on a Single Core.) Those problems were taken care of once the newer OS (or patch to the current one, I can not remember which) hit the markets and Intel's woes all but disappeared. In all likelihood this problem will also be taken care of once Windows 8 hits the markets.
The FX series while not being as powerful in alot of benchmarks (and also coming close in some) to i7, it still is powerful enough to play current games on whatever setting you choose. My main choice then was between the 8150 and the 8120 and with the budget I had set for my self, I ended up going for the FX8120.
I will end this blog with some more pictures I took (I apologize that the pictures are not of a better quality, however I will fix that in the near future when I buy my DSLR.... will also blog about that ^_^ ) Also my next blog will talk about the mother board options ( I will list good Intel options as well for all the Intel processors I talked about in my earlier post as well as other AMD motherboards plus the motherboard I ended up with.
Till then,
Adios Amigos.
My previous post talked about the very powerful Intel lineup and some of the amazing processors they have and with the specs they have you would ask (and rightfully so!) Why go any further? Why? Well it is very simple of course! No discussion about CPUs can be complete without mentioning the wonderful line of AMD CPUs. AMD who have been the king of budget computing for a while now have a very impressive lineup as well. The current AMD family includes the entry level Semprons, Athlon IIs, A-Series APUs which combine both a GPU and a CPU on the same chip, the Phenom IIs and the newly designed FX series.
With my wish to build a gaming pc, the Semprons were knocked out of contention right away being the entry level (budget friendly) cpu for very general computing requirements. It needs a AM3 socket type motherboard and if you want a general use cpu, The fastest Sempron (2.8Ghz Sempron 145 Sargas) is selling for only $39.99.
The Athlon II also drops out of the race for being pretty much a everyday use chip as well. It will run games better then the Sempron mind you but still it's performance leaves much to be desired. One really interesting thing to note, The Athlon II line has Quad-Core CPUs for $99.99 and under! If you want a reliable Quad-Core, you can opt for the AMD Athlon II 640 Propus which is for $99.99
The A-Series is an interesting attempt by AMD. They took a CPU and a GPU and put it onto a single chip. The idea according to AMD being that it will give you more performance in a budget environment without having to resort to buying a discrete GPU. With that in mind the AMD A8-3850 has a 2.9Ghz Quad-core and a AMD Radeon HD 6550D capable of running DirectX 11. It is selling for $139.99 and requires a socket FM1 motherboard. This too was not in contention for me as it is still not as powerful as my requirements are but if you do not care about playing games in High, Ultra High settings with very high FPS (Frames per Second) then by all means you can go for this chip.
From here on out things though get more interesting.
Phenom II
Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition
Stock speed for this little beauty is 3.2Ghz but as it happens to be a Black Edition, Overclocking it is a very simple matter. As long as you have adequate cooling solution it can be overclocked up to 3.8Ghz Stable. Needs a AM3 chipset motherboard. Selling for $124.99.
Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition
This chip starts out at 3.5Ghz and you can take it anywhere from there on! As with any AMD Black Edition, Overclockers are going to be happy with these chips as AMD chips are very very easy to overclock and very stable under overclocking. This one is available for only 139.99
For $169.99, you will get the AMD Phenom II X4 980 which starts at 3.7Ghz and people have been able to overclock to a stable 4.1Ghz with a lot of ease.
Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition
The amazing, awesome Six-Core offering from AMD runs at an equally awesome 3.3Ghz speed. It requires (as usual for AMD) an AM3 motherboard to run. Also being a Black Edition, people have been known to overclock it up to 4.1Ghz with on just the multiplier alone. one of my favorite CPUs which is selling for an awesome $189.99. Yes yes, I used too many awesome but for a sub $200 six core, what other word can you use!?
The Phenom II X6 1090T is also a worthy buy. Another 6-Core offering clocking in at 3.2Ghz and you can buy it for $174.99
FX Series
AMDs newest offering carrying the beloved FX moniker. There was a lot of hype surrounding the FX series (Code named Bulldozer) and when it was released it set a overclocking world record. The current record stands at 8.58Ghz for this CPU. However reviews and benchmarks gave a different view all together. First it was not the Core i7 beater everyone was hoping it would be (It comes close to Core i5 2500-2500k in terms of performance) and second it was the fact that it took 8-Cores to come close to an Intel 4-Core. In addition, the way AMD has designed the CPU, Current and previous Windows iterations can not handle scheduling efficiently for the cores which results in lower then expected performance. However, all FX chips are unlocked and as with all AMD unlocked cpus, overclocking is easy and works like a charm.
They have released 4 Chips so far.
A 4-Core 3.6Ghz AMD FX-4100 selling for only $119.99
The second is the 6-Core, 3.3Ghz AMD FX-6100 selling for 159.99.
FX-8120
The 8XXX series is AMDs 8-Core offering. Clocking in at an amazing 3.1Ghz, this beast can be overclocked reliably to 3.9Ghz with just air cooling alone and close to 5Ghz with liquid cooling. Needs a AM3+ socket motherboard (According to what I have read, it can run on the AM3 boards as well after a BIOS update.) Selling for $209.99.
AMDs biggest, baddest CPU. Clocking in at 3.6Ghz, this processor jumps to 4.2Ghz when Turbo Boost comes into effect. Selling for $269.99
And there, in a nutshell, you have all of AMDs offerings which I was greatly interested in.
Now all that is left is to tell you which CPU I went with and why...... and the winner is....
The AMD FX-8120.
The options that interested me the most were the i7 2600k, Phenom II 1100T, FX8120 and FX8150. Even with all the disappointment surrounding the FX Series, I ultimately decided on 8120 for the a number of reasons. I was honestly excited about the bulldozer release and even after all the reviews and benchmarks was still interested in it. The current scheduling problems it is running into are similar to what Intel ran into when it first introduced its HT (Hyper Threading : The way Intel offers 2 Threads on a Single Core.) Those problems were taken care of once the newer OS (or patch to the current one, I can not remember which) hit the markets and Intel's woes all but disappeared. In all likelihood this problem will also be taken care of once Windows 8 hits the markets.
The FX series while not being as powerful in alot of benchmarks (and also coming close in some) to i7, it still is powerful enough to play current games on whatever setting you choose. My main choice then was between the 8150 and the 8120 and with the budget I had set for my self, I ended up going for the FX8120.
I will end this blog with some more pictures I took (I apologize that the pictures are not of a better quality, however I will fix that in the near future when I buy my DSLR.... will also blog about that ^_^ ) Also my next blog will talk about the mother board options ( I will list good Intel options as well for all the Intel processors I talked about in my earlier post as well as other AMD motherboards plus the motherboard I ended up with.
Till then,
Adios Amigos.
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