Are the AMD FX-8350, AMD A10-5800k APU or i5-2500k good for an under $1,000 build?
$1000? you can jam in an a 8350 or a i5 2500k...and to choose between the two...first of all you gotta ask what are you doing with it
sandy bridge OC's like a champ, 4 cores, you're all set for gaming
multitask like a mofo? 8350 you can also game on it to just as good
here are some benches http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=697
I would get the FX6300.
It's just for gaming.
If its just for gaming then select an i5
i5, that's a no brainer
I would go with a 8350, the motherboards are cheaper and you can put that money into a better GPU, plus you get more SATA 6 Gbps ports with an AMD chipset
Dont buy a motherboard just because it has SATA III, you wont notice any benifits unless your running raid or something.
For a single SSD setup (HDD as Storage) SATA II does the job fine.
how about an AMD FX-8320. thats 20-40 $ you could put into a better GPU/MOBO/SSD
That cant be right. SATA II is only rated to 375MB/s and a lot of single SSD drives are rated at 500MB/s + thats a 25% loss in throughput. Agree about mechanical drives though.
As for the motherboards being cheaper, thats not always the case, my new i5 build motherboard cost about 20% less than the FX board I was going for because I needed a 990 board for the FX for basic features such as a USB 3.0 front panel connector and crossfire. Features oddly missing from most of the cheaper FX boards I have seen. And tho the z77 intel board I chose only has two sata III ports they are more than adequate for what I need and it has an Msata too which the FX board lacked.
I think my point was not to let how many SATA III ports are on a board dictate everything else you buy in the system.
375Mb/s is still double that of most HDD's etc etc.
Personally i find SATA II is fine for gaming, not many games actually use SSD/HDD much during playing, its mostly RAM/CPU/GPU being stressed.
But SATA III will help with loading from scratch, booting etc but we are only talking a couple of seconds maybe.