what will replace Athlon II X4? - $100 quadcore VFM CPU

A

ajaymailed

In the zone
i was wondering about the replacement of Athlon II X4, which are said to historically one of the most value for money CPUs. mainstream gamers loved it not only because of OCing potential but also low prices which could be

just when applications, games are really being programmed to take advantage of 4 or more cores, these budget quadcores are disappearing from the market.

AMD APUs have gr8 IGPs far ahead of Intel counterparts. But when it comes to CPU intensive applications, they hardly show any significant gains compared to Phenom. In some reviews/tests of CPU intensive applications, even Athlon II X4 is outperforming A6-3650.

Intel is going gr8 with Sandybridge and its tick-tock strategy, So i am guessing AMD will reduce the prices of its quad core APUs because even Core i3 is able to outperform many of them in CPU intensive tasks.
 
topgear

topgear

Super Moderator
Staff member
^^ currently the best quad core from AMD is Phenom II X4 960T @ ~6.5k ;-) - which can be unlocked into a hexa core cpu provided you have a supported mobo.
 
OP
A

ajaymailed

In the zone
topgear said:
^^ currently the best quad core from AMD is Phenom II X4 960T @ ~6.5k ;-) - which can be unlocked into a hexa core cpu provided you have a supported mobo.
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But Phenom Series is getting replaced by APUs & Bulldozers. Its becoming harder to find a Phenom right now. I was considering for days to come when Athlon & Phenom will completely disappear.


even if we consider 6K price level. Its not clear which CPU will win in case of gaming with discrete card. Core i3 2100 or A6-3650 or FX4100. while Core i3 has much superior per core performance, its two cores means limited multithreaded performance compared to quad/hexa core CPU.
 
ico

ico

Super Moderator
Staff member
We will have AMD Trinity APU soon.

It will have 4 Piledriver cores (2 modules), should be slightly faster than Athlon II on the CPU side.

On the GPU side, it is expected to be 40-50% faster than the current Radeon HD 6550D in A8-3850.

Don't worry about VFM segment. AMD will have those covered with their next APUs.
 
OP
A

ajaymailed

In the zone
Athlon, Phenom CPUs regularly came in Toms hardware Best gaming CPUs for money. I look eagerly check out that article everytime it releases for new month.

Now in Best gaming CPUs for money in March 2012, There is not a single AMD CPU mentioned except honorable mention for FX-4100.
Best Gaming CPUs For The Money, March Updates

other reviews
AMD FX Vs. Intel Core i3: Exploring Game Performance With Cheap GPUs
Picking A Sub-$200 Gaming CPU: FX, An APU, Or A Pentium?

Pentium Sandybridge steals the below-100$ position while Core i3 remains only player in 130-200$ price level except for honorable mention of Fx-4100.


Tomshardware strongly recommends not to go beyond Core i5 2500K, as it provides such a huge value for money at high-end with OC potential that rest of money can be spent on gpu & mobo

I think i got the answer ,Athlon II X4 is replaced by Pentium G840. Even though the number of cores are limited to two, Pentium Sandybridge is outperforming many of the quadcore APUs. Pentium rises from ashes in the form Sandybridge to finally take its revenge from Athlon series & AMD.

As far as mainstream gaming is concerned, Its game over for AMD. Intel has crushed AMD in every single price level.

2013 Intel will release a new 22nm architecture haswell, which should probably give sizable performance boost, outperforming any gains of AMD with the second gen bulldozer.
 
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ico

ico

Super Moderator
Staff member
yup, pretty much.

Though I'd rather want to do my own testing over theirs in G840 vs APU article.
 
Cilus

Cilus

laborare est orare
Buddy, consider Indian scenario rather than what is mentioned in Toms hardware. In US/Europe market the CPUs are pretty cheap compared to Indian price. Here the price difference is much higher and a Phenom II 955/965 makes perfect sense as they are available in sub 7K price.
The only Pentium available is G620, other models are simply not available anywhere. Could you provide me a single Indian site where Pentium G840 is available?
 
OP
A

ajaymailed

In the zone
Cilus said:
Buddy, consider Indian scenario rather than what is mentioned in Toms hardware. In US/Europe market the CPUs are pretty cheap compared to Indian price. Here the price difference is much higher and a Phenom II 955/965 makes perfect sense as they are available in sub 7K price.
The only Pentium available is G620, other models are simply not available anywhere. Could you provide me a single Indian site where Pentium G840 is available?
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Phenom X4 still makes perfect choice if availaible, thats why i myself bought it for my config recently but i was not considering it since its disappearing from the market.
I didn't know that G840 was not availaible in India. its really sad if they won't, they should release it, or atleast the future ivy bridge pentium models.

FX 4100 does seem to be decently good compared to A6, A8, FX hexcore, octacore in gaming at its price level. If those two extra cores really matter and might ultimately outperform Core i3 2100 in future with heavily multithreaded games, then FX 4100 seems to be choice at 7K. But with present games Core i3, Phenom X4 beats FX 4100.
 
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topgear

topgear

Super Moderator
Staff member
^^ we can't do nothing do about this ...and the "High" price depends on lots of things it's the hard truth ... but the comforting part is sometime we can get some hardware components even cheaper than newegg/amazon prices ;-)
 
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