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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Jovec - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
I understand prices change regularly, but you should check the linked prices. The general use budget build is currently $70 than the chart price. (-$3 for CPU, +$5 for mobo, +$35 for HDD, +$30 for the SSD, +$3 for the DVD). The HTPC build is $68 higher and the DVD burner chosen is listed as discontinued. The gaming build is $59 higher than the chart.randinspace - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
As the author said, it's important to watch out for price changes during the holidays as 16GB of Ram was available at 8GB prices (outside of 4GB quad kits anyway...), and I personally got a 2TB HDD for less than what 1TB internal drives and 500+ GB external ones are going for "on sale" this week....That said, these guidelines might have done people more more good had they come out before some of the year's best sales rather than in the middle of some of its worst ones (I'm looking at you, Newegg "Cyber Week"), but such is life.
Parhel - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
I'm glad I'm not the only one to notice what Newegg's been doing. Most of their "deals" were old tech they're trying to clear out of inventory, even on Black Friday.MrRez - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
I just built a system around the A10 5800k circa $600 all up, and I am really enjoying it! I paired it up with a 6670 1gig DDR5 cost me 80bucks and has given me a huge boost in some games.The main reason I went with the Trinity was that I had a small budget and needed something that I could do my work on, encode some video and play the odd game. I did alot of research and couldn't get an Intel system for the same money that would even come close to what the trinity could do.
Anyway I would recommend this type of system to anyone on a budget.
StevoLincolnite - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
Conversely, I came from an "old" Phenom 2 x6 1090T @ 4ghz to a Core i7 3930K @ 4.8ghz and in games I noticed zero difference when gaming at 5760x1080 as I'm always going to be GPU limited.However, encoding saw *massive* increases, but that's not a task I do very often and I usually do it during the night whilst I am asleep anyway.
Hardware today is still going to be more than ample for games of tomorrow, heck I know a few gamers still kicking around old Core 2 Quads that are heavily overclocked and game happily without a single issue, which says something about the state of games today not pushing the limits anymore.
dishayu - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
Heavily overclocked Core 2 Quad user here and i approve of this message.just4U - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
I know "LOTS" of gamers still on Quad 6600s.. C2D 8400s.. and Amd PIIs all happily playing along with decent video cards..The thing "today" is we really haven't hit the new big cpu yet. That was the Core2 and before the the Athlon64. Are cpu's better? Absolutely but they've been going in a sideways arc... with power+features rather then noticable brute power. I can go from my 2700K to a Q6600 to a E8400 to a PII920 to a 5800K all with enjoyable experiences provided the gpu power is there with 4Gigs of ram.
Overclocking adds more umph on top of that but it's not neccessary.
just4U - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
As a aside.. anyone on a C2D E6400 or under... time to move on. Every last cpu on the market today will give very noticable boosts right straight from the $60 cpu on up to the latest and greatest.JonnyDough - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
I finally upgraded from an Opteron 185 system (which I'm using to type this) to an i5 Ivy system. I also found an E8400 in the garbage and it works. It just needed a power supply a video card, and a hard drive. I have all of the above "just laying around" here so my girlfriend is getting a new system for Xmas too. :) Windows 7 is on sale at the Egg for $80.AndrewJacksonZA - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
I agree. I'm gaming, programming and encoding on a Core2Duo E6750 and an AMD 6670 on Windows 8.I can run *ALL* my games on their maximum resolution and detail settings seeing as my monitor is a 19" and runs at 1280 x 1024... and that I really dig my old games :-) However, my point is that the equipment I am using right now is "good enough" for my particular needs. Would I consider an upgrade? Definitely - but for something that runs much (much!) cooler and quieter. Is that a high priority in my life? Not right now.