I am thinking of doing the $350 gaming rig soon. I want to replace and eventually disable the built-in GPU with a Radeon HD 6870 and maybe crossfire it with a second one in the future. Even though the A8-3870k is "obsolete" now, I am still planning to go for that chip because it is good enough for what I want to do for the forseeable future. 3Ghz, Unlocked, Qudacore... That's all I need for now.
I'm thinking about using a full ATX mobo so I can install two discrete GPUs. If I do this, can I disable the GPU on the APU? If I can do this, it would make some really nice upgrades down the road.
Yes, of course you can. I think it'll just be like HD 4000 on intel so as soon as you put the graphics card in the PCI slot then it will disable.
Two things to note however are that you will need a motherboard with a PCI x16 slot and preferable two if you are overclocking and if I were you I wouldn't bother with a 6870 and instead just get a 7850 or whatever is priced around that at the time of purchase.
That's the plan. I might start out witht he APU's built-in GPU, but eventually replace that with a 6870 or even a 7970 and eventually crossfire that with a second card. That way, the computer will start out budget, but become badass!
Then the CPU will become a bottleneck in your system as it is only about as good as an i3 and also that APU isn't the fastest there is..
You din't do the research, A8 3870k is a Liano... That was released Q4 2011 or Q1 2012, you have right now Trinity APU that is faster and better. Trinity was released for desktops in Q3/Q4 of 2012 while this month Richland(Trinity 2.0) will be released on March 19 while NDA will be lifted off on March 12 and we will see the results and benchmarks.
I know the A8-3870k is a Liano.
My current desktop is a K8 with 2GB of memory and an 800FSB. It has a Geforce 7300GT 8xAGP (512MB) videocard, so the 3870k will be a serious upgrade. If I decide I can do something better for within $50 of the same price, I will.
My other desktop is a Pentium4 HT with 2GB of memory as well. Either way, I haven't had a new desktop in a long time. My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1545. I replaced the Pentium Dual Core with a Core2 Duo and installed an SSD. If it plays Skyrim, it will suck at it. The Pentium 4 HT with the Geforce 7300GT is better for gaming than the laptop.. Even though the laptop has a better CPU, the desktop's graphics make the difference.
The Pentium 4 HT was a pretty good chip, back in the day. There's even a vid of someone playing Skyrim on one with a Radeon HD 4670 without lag. Still, I think it's time for a stronger CPU.
If I can find a Skt 775 mobo and a Core 2 Quad or Extreme cheap enough, I'll do that. As long as I can install 8GB of memory and a couple of video cards, I'm good.
I want a better system that can edit video, do some recording and play Skyrim at high settings, but I'm kinda broke.
I just wanted to know if I can disable the GPU that is built into the APU.
I found out the A10 5800k is maybe $20 more and the FM2 mobo is less expensive, so maybe I will do that. I will build the best thing I can with the money I have, which isn't a lot.
I have to agree that the Llano based A8 is nowhere near good enough to bother building a system around anymore, and with the price of current generation APU's being what they are, you should at least consider going with one of those. About trying to find a Core2 Quad, I wouldn't bother anymore. Because I tried to source one myself, and they can't be had for anything reasonable, so you would be better off either going with the new Trinity A8, or waiting for the new Richland to come out. Umm, aside from that, the i3 is still a good option, since most games STILL don't use more than two cores or four threads, so it isn't half bad. Alternately, there are always the old K10 chips, like the Phenom II series. The old 965 BE isn't a terrible option, and it is really cheap as well. Or you can just get a standard AM3+ board and get something powered by the latest generation of FX chips. The FX 4300 series is actually pretty nice.
the a8 isn't a bad choice for a budget, but if you plan on upgrading it'll probibly bottleneck pretty fast, crossfire wont make a difference if you've already hit the top of what the cpu can deliver
Well if you plan to get an FM2 board, well you could get Athlon 2 x4 750k if possible... But its not that much available like in Europe.
I saw in some post you can get it for 90$ even thought at launch was 81$ :S Weird...
I found an ITX board (Skt AM2). It is an ASUS M2N61-AR board made for HP. I sold it on eBay. I would have kept it, but DDR2 is almost 2x the cost of DDR3.
For me it just diasbled as soon as I put in my grpahics card. this is with an A10-5800k.
How good is the 5800k and its built-in GPU with Skyrim? Maybe with 4 or 8GB of G.Skill Sniper PC3 14900 memory?
is there a way to enable the on die gpu to use physx or is that just nvidia?
Why did you just bump this post?
old thread is ollllllldddd. locked
