i am thinking of getting the msi a88x-g45 and pairing it with the athlon x4 760k
the thing is, i am considering on pairing that with a r9 280 as it seems like it is the best "bang for the buck"
i have been warned that this cpu will 'bottleneck' the gpu, but i cant find a better fm2+ cpu that isnt an apu (at this poit) so this is were my question arises from; will i be able to upgrade the cpu in the future or is it a dead end?
any suggestions?
if you can, wait for the 860 but a 760 will not bottleneck a 290. It may not be totally optimal. but it would be fine. At this point in the FM2+ is pretty young. I would, however advise against an MSI board with AMD. try to go for Gigabyte,Asus or even ASrock. This is all assuming you are hell bent on an R9-290 at all costs. Not sure what your budget is, But here is a highly upgradible PC with an R9-280, 128 gb SSD 8gigs of 1866 Ram 500watt PSU and case for $702 You may be able to get it lower by going down to an R9 270. But with FM2+ you will look at that initial price of $400-500 and think "well I bet I could upgrade that X for Y and.....$900 system http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/
thankyou for your feedback, any reason behind going against msi mobo and amd? just curious
any idea of when the 860 is coming? i didnt even know there was such a thing.
oh, and i am not 'hellbent' on a r9 290... im hellbent on a r9 280 :P
this is what i found with a simple google search, just in case anyone else is curious
"The Athlon X4 860K will be available worldwide this month with an MSRP of $84." Tom'sHardware
Oh, Even better then. :P MSI has a bad reputation for failure with AMD based boards. I admit, they make a pretty board. But MSI is better with with Intel; specifically Itx and mini itx boards. also the power phase is somewhat lacking (4+2) I like MSI, but from what I have seen, their FM2+ boards are only second in being undesirable to their AM3+ boards.
oh ok, i appreciate the info. thank you.
I have the 760K (OC'd to 4.7GHz) paired with a R9 270 (OC'd to 1050MHz clock) on a MSI A88XM-E45. The 270 obviously isn't as powerful as the 280 but my CPU doesn't even come close to bottlenecking the GPU, so honestly I think it would be fine.
As far as the MSI motherboard, I almost bought the G45 but I found the E45 on a really good sale and couldn't pass it up. In retrospect I really wish I would have dropped more money on the motherboard because the E45, while it has allowed me a pretty decent overclock, doesn't allow you to manually set voltage and is only a 4-pin power connector which I think limits how much I can overclock so I've been kicking myself over it ever since.
If I could do it over again I would definitely go with the Gigabyte GA-F2A88X-UP4, which I would recommend checking out as it's $89 after rebate at NewEgg.
I use a older FM2 A-10 5800K OC'ed to a modest 4.3 on air for my bedroom PC. Closest comparable Athlon is x4 750K. Been running strong for over 2 years. And I have been running it with a GTX 760 for over a year now with no issues. Only problems I have had was a had full of games badly coded for AMD or had everything dumped to one thead. Looking at you Need for Speed. Anyway for a Budget build I recommend them highly. Any reason I'm upgrading soon is that I need more theads for other work I'm doing now.
I have built a friends new rig on a MSI A88XM Gaming board and no issues yet. Its a A-10 7850K with 4.5Ghz OC and iGPU OC to 950Mhz. However if you are fine with the Asus feature set I always go with them first.
Get the 760K, its an amazing value CPU, and the 280 is a excellent card too.
Anyone who says the CPU will "bottleneck" the GPU clearly has no idea what bottle-necking is.
Buy with confidance, sir
P.s get a good aftermarket cooler and overclock the shit out of that 760K (my Mrs has her one running at 4.8 or 4.9MHz)
You may want to wait for the 860, just because that's the only way to take advantage of the newer features of the A88X chipset; PCIe3 and such aren't supported by the 760k.
Yes please wait for the 860.
thanks for the feedback, i will wait, hopefully it comes out soon and doesn't get delayed or anything like that
The new Athlon 860K is the A10-7850k without the iGPU.
Just the same; 750K = A10-5800k w/o iGPU and 760K = A10-6800K w/o iGPU.
That being said, even though the Kaveri parts are on a smaller manufacturing node, CPU vs CPU, the 860K will be about the same, performance wise, as the 760K. If you want to see for your self, just check out the reviews and tests comparing the A10-5800/6800k vs the A10-7850K and look at the CPU-specific tests/benchmarks.
As for the FM2+ socket, there are many valid reasons to believe we haven't seen the best AMD has for this platform yet. One hint, IMO, is all the higher-end gaming motherboards that have been coming out of the wood work lately (ROG, MSI gaming etc.). I can't see them developing boards like this if the 7850K was to be the best processor there will ever be on this socket. ;)
Just my two cents.
Personally I'd feel pretty save going FM2+ for a gaming PC in terms of future life-span and upgradability.
it depends allot on the games you play.
Basicly a 760K with a 280 should basicly fine for allot of games. gpu bound games you wont realy notice any bottlenecking.
But wenn it comes to cpu+gpu bound, you will definitely notice some bottlenecking. Still most games will be verywell playable. Also if you are going with the 280 you got mantle, which will help aswell.
If you are playing games like skyrim, BF4 multiplayer, Metro, then i would personaly look for a better cpu.
Bottleneck is nothing more, then a cpu hittings its limmits, and it cannot keep up with the gpu anymore, then you will see the load on the gpu dropping. and thats basicly the bottleneck.
Basicly every cpu will bottleneck at a certain point.
Personaly i dont realy bother with the whole Fm2+ platform at all. If you on a tight budget sure, you still can put a nice rig together with the 760K, But if can afford better, then i would advice to go better, like a FX6300, FX8320, or maybe some of the cheaper i5´s.
i play none of those games hahaha
i mostly play indies and mmo's
will probably get borderlands 2. im not a fan of first person shooters but its on sale on steam and hey why not... thinking like that now i see why everyone says farewell to their wallets when there's a steam sales event ...
I'm waiting on the 860K myself. I have my new motherboard sitting nice and snug in its box waiting for it. Just hope they release it this next week as its payday.
Good call. The 860k will out performe the 760k especially since the architecture and instruction sets have been revised and refreshed. Can't say how much though. The 860k should be able to keep up with a R9 280, if anything you may have to oc it a bit. FM2+ should be a good socket to build on, its fairly new and has a lot of life left in it yet. There's even been rumors of a 6 core apu/athlon in the near future that will run on FM2+.
Neat!