Holiday 2012 AMD Trinity Buyer's Guide
by Zach Throckmorton on November 29, 2012 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
- Systems
- AMD
- Trinity
- Holiday 2012
Final Words
To be blunt, AMD has seen better days than today. Its higher-end CPUs (the FX series) have difficulty competing with Intel's Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs in many regards, though Piledriver has helped narrow the gap. Up until recently, AMD competed with Intel's lower end CPUs (Celerons and Pentium Dual Cores) with older, power-hungry processors (Athlon II X2s, X3, and X4s). This situation was especially untenable in the mobile market. If you've followed my guides over the last two years, you've seen fewer and fewer systems based on AMD processors.
But the first-generation Llano APUs and especially the current-gen Trinity APUs fare well against Intel's low- and mid-range CPUs. From a consumer standpoint, competition is always good, and I'm glad to see AMD competing well in the mainstream market segment. Most of the computers I build are mainstream systems, and it's great to be able to reduce power consumption, system complexity, and cost by simply cutting out the discrete GPU—while still allowing my computers' users to play new, popular video game titles. Trinity is especially well-suited to the small form factor, and I hope motherboard manufacturers start to make more models available!
While Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, holiday sales will continue to present compelling prices to potential parts buyers. If you're patient and do your homework, you'll be able to put together systems like the ones outlined in this guide for as little money as possible. AnandTech's own Hot Deals Forum is a great place to find and share what are often ephemeral, flaming prices on hardware. And of course, AnandTech's General Hardware Forum is a great place to ask any questions you might have and share your expertise with fellow enthusiasts.
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ImSpartacus - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
E8400 here, still begrudgingly using a 4890. Waiting for a nice deal or the next gen. I want to get something that's just barely bottlenecking so I know I've exhausted this great CPU.Paulman - Sunday, December 2, 2012 - link
Core 2 Duo E8400 Overclocked to 3.7GHz :PStarted with a Radeon HD 4870 512MB (which died) and then bought a friend's used Gigabyte NVIDIA Geforce 460 GTX 1GB.
It's been serving me decently for Starcraft 2 and BF3 was ok, too, I think :P 1920x1080 (no AA on SC2, I can't remember for BF3)
A Sandy Bridge Core i5 quad-core would be a really nice upgrade for me, though :P But way too much work to change.
Oh yeah, and I'm running Windows Vista 64-bit hee hee
Stupido - Sunday, December 2, 2012 - link
Here, one more...dananski - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
Single threaded CPU performance still becomes a bottleneck when the game is poorly coded. Ever played Cities XL? 100% CPU on one core all the time. Anything beyond a small town and it starts lagging, even on my i7-3770 :( Don't even get me started on Neverwinter Nights...But yes, the majority of modern games will not experience much issue on a decent Core 2 Quad. Just get the beefiest graphics card(s) your wallet / power budget / ears can take!
Ethaniel - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
So, on average 20 percent of the computer's budget is eaten by the OS. The world is mad. Or is it Microsoft...?philosofool - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
The price of the OS seems pretty reasonable to me. I know people who built a computer when XP came out that didn't have to upgrade their OS until 2010. There's no other part in a computer, except maybe the case, that has that sort of life span.Zodiark1593 - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
DVD Drive? The drive in my parents computer lasted from 2003 to just a couple months ago when my little sister snapped the tray off. :/just4U - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
DvD Drives are fickle. Some last 6 months some just go on and on.JonnyDough - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
I second that. Although most run for years.jospoortvliet - Saturday, December 1, 2012 - link
Well, especially for an htpc that is insane. If you're going to run xbmc on it anyway, why bother with all the extra work you need to do to keep Windows secure and running - AND pay for that 'privilege'? With Valve coming to Linux and wine taking care of most slightly older games there's no need for that...