AMD PC build

The problem with the intel option is that it is way over my budget(I only have about R7000) I was also thinking of maybe getting a AMD Kaveri A10-7700K with a ASUS A58M-K motherboard whitch is a bit cheaper,I am only going to use it for Gaming and media consumption and some video editing.
 
The problem with the intel option is that it is way over my budget(I only have about R7000)

You can do do the Intel build for about R7500-R7600 I reckon which is slightly over your budget, about the cost of a cooler for the 6300.
 
With lots of games supporting Mantle and more in the future, CPU requirments for gaming won't be an issue. Even if DX12 comes into play (if).
However, there is a few games, like Whitcher 3, that apparently wants a beefier CPU than an 6300. Even my 8320 is apparently a little light in the pants for it.

I hope Mantle uptake and the DX12 coming, is happening soon. Will save me from buying a new CPU.

Mantle API is done, in short it will be 'integrated' into DX12 tech. AMD announced and urged that developers should stop with Mantle and take up with DX12 and glNext. Mantle is still around, but AMD want developers to use Mantle Draw Call abilities which will be in DX12 and glNext.
 
Mantle API is done, in short it will be 'integrated' into DX12 tech. AMD announced and urged that developers should stop with Mantle and take up with DX12 and glNext. Mantle is still around, but AMD want developers to use Mantle Draw Call abilities which will be in DX12 and glNext.

To quote AMD:

http://community.amd.com/community/...g/2015/03/02/on-apis-and-the-future-of-mantle

Snip:

Proud moments also call for reflection, and today we are especially thoughtful about Mantle’s future. In the approaching era of DirectX® 12 and the Next-Generation OpenGL Initiative, AMD is helping to develop two incredibly powerful APIs that leverage many capabilities of the award-winning Graphics Core Next (GCN) Architecture.

AMD’s game development partners have similarly started to shift their focus, so it follows that 2015 will be a transitional year for Mantle. Our loyal customers are naturally curious about what this transition might entail, and we wanted to share some thoughts with you on where we will be taking Mantle next:

1. AMD will continue to support our trusted partners that have committed to Mantle in future projects, like Battlefield™ Hardline, with all the resources at our disposal.
2. Mantle’s definition of “open” must widen. It already has, in fact. This vital effort has replaced our intention to release a public Mantle SDK, and you will learn the facts on Thursday, March 5 at GDC 2015.
3. Mantle must take on new capabilities and evolve beyond mastery of the draw call. It will continue to serve AMD as a graphics innovation platform available to select partners with custom needs.
3.1 The Mantle SDK also remains available to partners who register in this co-development and evaluation program. However, if you are a developer interested in Mantle "1.0" functionality, we suggest that you focus your attention on DirectX® 12 or GLnext.
 
I would advise against going for a AMD build purely because they are overly priced in South Africa compared to their International pricing. If you don't believe me check on amazon or new-egg. Look how badly the prices scale. Because of this they automatically lose the bang for buck war. Rather stick with a Intel rig.
 
Khronos Group renamed GLnext to Vulkan, both DX12 and Vulkan will share Mantle properties. Reading back to when AMD announed the Mantle initiative, this was their goal. However we will now see Mantle tech in competitor products as well. I doubt there will ever be a Mantle API 1.x, 2/2.x etc.

I'm holding thumbs for Vulkan and I hope it takes off. It's cross platform, OS agnostic, open standard. So it will run on anything from your cellphone to your your GTX Titan, this I suspect developers will like as it makes porting much easier.
 
R4518, leaving you about R2500 for a CPU if you stay within your budget or you can spend a wee bit more and get a 4690 i5.

Here are some CPU options ranging from R2669-R3086
R2669 i5-4460
R2885 i5-4590
R3086 i5-4690

So with 3 possible CPU options your total build cost will come to,
i5-4460 R7187
i5-4590 R7403
i5-4690 R7604

What do you think about this considering your R7k budget, Intel looking more viable now?

You could always get a used CPU (& maybe a few other things) off Carbonite and come in way below your R7k budget if you are happy going that route.
 
Bought my i5-3470 off carbonite for R1300
It's currently running on a R600 LGA1155 motherboard that can handle the turbo clock of 3.6Ghz.

Seen a lot of great deals since. Basically take the retail price minus R1000. That's how much tray 4th gens and secondhand goes for about.

Haven't seen in any tray AMD cpus on there though. They normally work out R17 to the dollar @ retail.
 
AMD's price edge may be less pronounced here but it isn't non-existent. If people don't want to support AMD it will get even less pronounced so that is flawed logic.

An Intel rig will come out more than your budget and then you don't have options for increasing performance. LOL at the Intel boys needing to look at second hand again.
 
An Intel rig will come out more than your budget and then you don't have options for increasing performance. LOL at the Intel boys needing to look at second hand again.

Let's consider this. In order to OC that fx-6300 you are gonna need a decent MB (R1400 gets you a very nice one I do admit), you will also require an aftermarket cooler to get that fx-6300 up to 4.4-4.6GHz clock speed. You are gonna need a slightly beefier PSU, the fx-6300 hits 180W TDP at 4.6GHz vs about 84W on the non-k series i5 models, in addition to this you are gonna generate more heat in the chassis which you also have to contend with. And at the end of the day you will still not reach i5 performance levels so I don't see the lack of increasing i5 performance as an issue as you would be ahead anyway.

So taking this into consideration locally the fx-6300 solution is gonna cost you more and you are still not going to reach the same performance levels as an i5 system. I was keen to go down this road myself but sanity prevailed. If we could get AMD CPU's at prices relative to US prices here I would say GO for it! Unfortunately the bang for buck element is simply not here in SA as in the rest of the world. My brother in the UK has a fx-6300 build which worked out way cheaper than an Intel build but here that is unfortunately not the case and I don't see why we should support the local arrangement. I'm not an Intel fanboy, I'm only on my second Intel system now, all my previous systems have been AMD starting with the K6 series in the 90's. There's a reason the fx-6300 is punted as a good performing budget build in system builders guides online and I agree with them, the only problem is that SA prices are not in line therefore those guides don't apply to us here in the good old RS of A :D
 
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Let's consider this. In order to OC that fx-6300 you are gonna need a decent MB (R1400 gets you a very nice one I do admit), you will also require an aftermarket cooler to get that fx-6300 up to 4.4-4.6GHz clock speed. You are gonna need a slightly beefier PSU, the fx-6300 hits 180W TDP at 4.6GHz vs about 84W on the non-k series i5 models, in addition to this you are gonna generate more heat in the chassis which you also have to contend with. And at the end of the day you will still not reach i5 performance levels so I don't see the lack of increasing i5 performance as an issue as you would be ahead anyway.

So taking this into consideration locally the fx-6300 solution is gonna cost you more and you are still not going to reach the same performance levels as an i5 system. I was keen to go down this road myself but sanity prevailed. If we could get AMD CPU's at prices relative to US prices here I would say GO for it! Unfortunately the bang for buck element is simply not here in SA as in the rest of the world. My brother in the UK has a fx-6300 build which worked out way cheaper than an Intel build but here that is unfortunately not the case and I don't see why we should support the local arrangement. I'm not an Intel fanboy, I'm only on my second Intel system now, all my previous systems have been AMD starting with the K6 series in the 90's. There's a reason the fx-6300 is punted as a good performing budget build in system builders guides online and I agree with them, the only problem is that SA prices are not in line therefore those guides don't apply to us here in the good old RS of A :D
Or you just focus on other areas like RAM or GPU. Blows your entire argument out of the water. Might even get a system that performs exceptionally better than an Intel rig in some applications. As I already said the bang for buck may be less here but it isn't non existent. If more people supported AMD it would actually look better as it's a contributing factor.
 
Or you just focus on other areas like RAM or GPU. Blows your entire argument out of the water. Might even get a system that performs exceptionally better than an Intel rig in some applications. As I already said the bang for buck may be less here but it isn't non existent. If more people supported AMD it would actually look better as it's a contributing factor.

How is it gonna perform better at the same price?

These were my build options a month ago,

MB - R1401 - MSI AMD 970 Gaming AM3plus ATX Motherboard
CPU - R1698 - AMD FX-6300 Vishera Black Edition 6-Core 3.5GHz
Cooler - R333 - Zalman CNPS10X Optima
RAM - R1170 - 2x Crucial Ballistix S XT 4GB 1866Mhz DDR3
GPU - R2999 - Galax 96NPH8DVD9XX GeForce GTX 960 EXOC 2048MB GDDR5 128-bit
HDD - R758 - WD Blue 1TB 3.5 inch SATAIII
PSU - R599 - Super Flower SF-450P14XE(HX)
TOTAL: R8958


MB - R637 - MSI Intel H81M-P33 H81
CPU - R2889 - Intel Core I5 4690 Processor 3.50Ghz
RAM - R976 - 2x Corsair Value Select A - 4GB DDR3 DRAM Desktop Memory - 1600Mhz
GPU - R2999 - Galax 96NPH8DVD9XX GeForce GTX 960 EXOC 2048MB GDDR5 128-bit
HDD - R758 - WD Blue 1TB 3.5 inch SATAIII
PSU - R599 - Super Flower SF-450P14XE(HX)
TOTAL: R8957

There is no difference in price at the end of the day.

Wrt to my Carbonite comment you can pick up new i7-4790 tray CPUs for R2200 for example.
 
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How is it gonna perform better at the same price?

These were my build options a month ago,

MB - R1401 - MSI AMD 970 Gaming AM3plus ATX Motherboard
CPU - R1698 - AMD FX-6300 Vishera Black Edition 6-Core 3.5GHz
Cooler - R333 - Zalman CNPS10X Optima
RAM - R1170 - 2x Crucial Ballistix S XT 4GB 1866Mhz DDR3
GPU - R2999 - Galax 96NPH8DVD9XX GeForce GTX 960 EXOC 2048MB GDDR5 128-bit
HDD - R758 - WD Blue 1TB 3.5 inch SATAIII
PSU - R599 - Super Flower SF-450P14XE(HX)
TOTAL: R8958


MB - R637 - MSI Intel H81M-P33 H81
CPU - R2889 - Intel Core I5 4690 Processor 3.50Ghz
RAM - R976 - 2x Corsair Value Select A - 4GB DDR3 DRAM Desktop Memory - 1600Mhz
GPU - R2999 - Galax 96NPH8DVD9XX GeForce GTX 960 EXOC 2048MB GDDR5 128-bit
HDD - R758 - WD Blue 1TB 3.5 inch SATAIII
PSU - R599 - Super Flower SF-450P14XE(HX)
TOTAL: R8957

There is no difference in price at the end of the day.

Wrt to my Carbonite comment you can pick up new i7-4790 tray CPUs for R2200 for example.
For one thing 1866 ram would be better than 1600. You deliberately went with a cheapo mobo here to make the price difference balance for Intel. The AMD mobo is a lot better with more features than the Intel one. To get the same with Intel and a better chipset you would have to add another R1000 or so. So at the end of the day it's still the same old same old that you have to cut back on an Intel rig to make the budget work. Add that R1000 and you can upgrade to 2133MHz or have SLI. The Intel board supports neither.
 
For one thing 1866 ram would be better than 1600. You deliberately went with a cheapo mobo here to make the price difference balance for Intel. The AMD mobo is a lot better with more features than the Intel one. To get the same with Intel and a better chipset you would have to add another R1000 or so. So at the end of the day it's still the same old same old that you have to cut back on an Intel rig to make the budget work. Add that R1000 and you can upgrade to 2133MHz or have SLI. The Intel board supports neither.

The AMD board was chosen for it's overclocking ability, the cheap boards don't fare so well at OCing. The features were an extra, not a requirement. The Intel board does not have to overclock, the chipset & features does nothing for the performance. Buy the cheapest MB you can and spend the money on gpu & cpu instead. Previous Q6600 build used a G31 MB which was also cheap but did a good job. If you are not going to ever use 12 USB ports, 10 sata ports etc then there is no need for it.

EDIT: List a few make&model mobos that can OC the fx-6300 properly and we'll do builds based on those.
 
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The performance gain on 1866 ram is virtually irrelevant. When your on a budget you want to squeeze out as much as possible.

Also why the hell would one pay R1000 extra to have SLI, there's a R2000 difference between the GTX960 and GTX970
It's better to just go straight GTX970 or to sell your GTX960 and pay in R2500 as to get 2 x GTX960 for R6000

The only legit reason to get a motherboard is to OC, or to pay in a few extra for the ATX form factor.
But every dime you spend on one thing could of been added to another component.

I've seen way to many people go SLI just to in the end, never use it. By the time they get the money for the second card, a superior incompatible single card is already out.

PS:
R1500
http://carbonite.co.za/f39/2-intel-core-i5-4590-processors-6m-cache-3-70-ghz-95506/
Of course you'll need to ship it and add a heatsink, but that's the temptation of Carbonite.

Suddenly what was a R1000 price gap @ retail, is now almost equal.
 
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As a rule of thumb:

Processor: Intel
GPU: AMD - Best bang for Buck. Thou I haven't evaluated the new Nvida GPU's.
 
The AMD board was chosen for it's overclocking ability, the cheap boards don't fare so well at OCing. The features were an extra, not a requirement. The Intel board does not have to overclock, the chipset & features does nothing for the performance. Buy the cheapest MB you can and spend the money on gpu & cpu instead. Previous Q6600 build used a G31 MB which was also cheap but did a good job. If you are not going to ever use 12 USB ports, 10 sata ports etc then there is no need for it.

EDIT: List a few make&model mobos that can OC the fx-6300 properly and we'll do builds based on those.
You miss the point. You continue to focus on the CPU when that's not all there is. The increased memory speed and ability to xfire is already a plus for the AMD. With Intel you had to deliberately skip on features to make budget. So what would you get for that R1000 extra of a similar Intel setup?

Can upgrade to 2133MHz or do xfire for one. With Intel you would have to add that R1000 just to get the board support. Then you are still sitting with 1600MHz memory and single graphics card.
 
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