I’m considering building an HTPC using AMD’s new AMD A8-3850 APU. I realize this is a new chip, but does anyone have any thoughts, experience, wisdom to share about this processor? I have a main gaming system, powered by my Phenom II X4 965BE and a GTX460, so it won’t be replacing that for the high end games, but from what I’ve read, this APU will do a modest job should I want to do some gaming on the 37" LCD. More importantly, I would use it for movies, music, et cetera. Boinc being one of the other jobs of course.
I am considering pairing it with a Gigabyte mobo. I’ve had good luck with Gigabyte. Also considering using one of the newer small water cooling setups to keep noise at a minimum.
Don’t know about the A8-3850, but my current HTPC set up uses a Athlon 64 5000 Dual Core with an ATI 4350 GFX card and it copes with everything I have thrown at it. Saying that, I am just about to rebuild it with a Phenom 9550/Gigabyte M68M-S2P.
The A8-3850 should adequately cope in the role of a HTPC.
Machine for the wife for her 18hours a week she will be doing, it compares well in price to the i3/5 setups and for some odd reason has more appeal to me to go AMD. Possibly down to the CPU price :lol:
I played with one for 5 days (AMD Sent to me) about 60 days ago. We are using in a KIOSK setup and it is great! FAST, COOL and well the video is great! We tried the A4 also and that is what we are going to use but the A8 series was perfect. If they move into mobile device AMD will just be the ticket. I would love to see it in TABLETS some day.
Thanks for the feedback Step! I think you will see this tech in tablets, but they have to significantly drop the power requirements first (or build much better batteries). As was said in a movie who’s title I forget: “Son, you can have power or you can have economy. You can’t have both”.
Pulled the trigger on this today. Parts will arrive by Monday, then well see how well it performs
AMD A8-3850 Llano 2.9GHz Socket FM1 100W Quad-Core Desktop APU AD3850WNGXBOX
GIGABYTE GA-A75M-UD2H FM1 AMD A75 (Hudson D3) SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
SAMSUNG Black Blu-ray Combo SATA Model SH-B123L/RSBP LightScribe Support
D-Link DWA-556 PCI Express Xtreme Desktop Adapter
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-4GBNQ
SILVERSTONE Black 8.0mm aluminum front panel, 0.8mm SECC body GRANDIA GD04B Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case
Logitech MK520 USB RF Wireless Ergonomic Desktop
Somewhere in the future, if the fans are too loud while under load (crunching, of course ), I may throw some SilentX fans in it and hook up a water cooler.
I have a program that takes input by the key1 at a time, i think this is the problem as when someone hits ‘1’, it just gives me the codes for shift, then ‘1’, not ‘’ as i need.how do i get it to take a multiple key character?Even if its only a different way of checking if a specific key is down… that might be better
I’ll be sure to report how this goes. I don’t expect any problems from the CPU. There could be a few kinks to work out in the mobo since the chip is new and there’s always a BIOS tweak needed here and there. My experience with Gigabyte says they regularly do a great job, so I have confidence. Plus, the few issues reported on various forums were very minor.
), I may throw some SilentX fans in it and hook up a water cooler.