Building a gaming PC, need advice from you hardware experts

[jprior]

Hi bugrimmar,

I saw your post and wanted to give you some info and options. Full disclosure, I work for AMD. I used to write technical reviews for Rage3D.com.

With a budget of $500 for proc/mobo/mem/graphics you've got a lot of options on the AMD side. I would like to share some options for you:

(1) AMD A10-6800K APU with Gigabyte GA-F2A85XM-HD3 motherboard and a set of 2x4GB DDR3-2133 memory sticks. This will run you around $250, leaving you plenty of cash for games - or other components, I'll add to that in a second.

You asked in your OP about whether APU gaming is any good or not; it is and here's why. The AMD A10-6800K takes four CPU cores and adds a discrete class GPU to it. It's not a high end card, hence why it's named the Radeon HD 8670D. This puts it on par in gaming with an i5 and a GT 630 from the competition - but for a lot less money.

Most games, as was noted in other posts, run 3-4 threads which means they run nicely on quad and six core processors. The next generation of games will be ported from consoles which all run AMD technology. For future proofing, you might consider if you want to wait for some other vendor's hardware to be optimized for the game, or if you want the hardware it was developed and tuned on.

Both AMD and their competitor are in the APU game, one major difference is how much engineering AMD dedicate for graphics, and how good those graphics are. If you're a gamer on a budget, the APU series of products are very strong in both outright performance and in performance per dollar - you get more on both counts.

If you decide to go with the A10-6800K, you can upgrade graphics later to get more performance rather than adding discrete from the beginning, just to get basic performance with an non-AMD product. The APU concept is widely praised - check out Forbes coverage of the A8-6600 to get an idea of what the techology is all about (link - http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2013/08/13/can-amds-newest-apu-play-your-favorite-games-without-a-dedicated-graphics-card-part-1/)

For 1680x1050 you don't need huge graphics horsepower, in fact my next suggestion is way overkill for your needs but I'm an enthusiast, and I like spending other people's imaginary money, so to build the best bang/buck:

(2) FX-6350 3.9Ghz (base, 4.2GHz Turbo) 6-core CPU, Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 motherboard, 2x4GB DDR3-2133, AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz ED - This prices out at $505 on newegg, if you take off the rebates then you're at $490; You can get a HD 7950 for only ~$20 more, and that will bump you from the Never Settle Forever Silver tier to Gold, for more free games.

I hope that's helpful and if you need any more questions answered, post 'em up or shoot me a PM. You can find me on twitter as @cavemanjim