I have been messing around with some of the new things on the market today just to see what's going on. Weirdly I have not really been so excited doing these things in the past few years as if I lost interest but recently found myself entertained doing so. I don't have the luxury as I use to when companies would pay me to fiddle and test so this was strictly out of my pocket but like any other hobby, what isn't?
So I ordered a NewEgg special just to F with it. I think I paid about 150 bucks for motherboard and processor.
Asrock-A75M-HVS -Motherboard
A4 3300 AMD APU/CPU
Now this is not a gaming system by all means but I just wanted to test this platform just to see what you could expect. Sure I could have went to Toms or some other Hardware site for a review but what fun is that along with never really liked the BS with reviews compared to real world schemes.
I am still tinkering but I would say that in a price comparison it really isn't worth. The Graphics APU is a Dx11 part which is nice but overall it scores about the same as the 4200 series integrated gpu which sadly is just a Dx 10.1 part. It got me thinking, who really cares about Dx 11 unless you are gaming. As far as the selling points of this platform, the older architecture is just as good as this. Price comparison is also very similiar. I know there are faster processors on this platform that offer more cache but to me that stuff is marketing gimmicks because a system based on this platform would be strictly for either office computer or maybe a HPC box. Quite honestly, I still would not say this is that much better than what AMD has had out the past few years.
Ok so what can I say about this unit I have lying wide open on my work bench with 8 gigs of ram and power supply? Well the APU/CPU is unlocked so I currently have it running at 3.0 GHz without any sort of adjustment in voltage. Whoop D F'ing do. I see no reason to even push this thing further at this point. Ok I will try though but again this really isn't what this system would be for.
A benifit to such a system is you can place another VGA card in and run in crossfire mode and save power but really? That was a capability with the onboard graphics 4200 series. The only thing new is it can be done with a Dx11 part and if you calculate the price of everything including an additional video card regardless if the cars is like 30-40 bucks, it's still not going to offer that much when it comes to performance compared to what you can do with even an older system and an older video card.
Quite honestly, this platform is not worthy to be a desktop computer. Is it bad that it couldn't be? Not at all but when it comes to money and performance, there are better options. Maybe a newer APU they have out on the market is better but compared to the pricing, I just don't see it even worth trying that.
It is with my strongest opinion with such platform AMD is marketing it completly wrong. These should not be components you add one by one but a complete board with components integrated without option to upgrade. They should mini itx boards ready for aplliances or all in one systems. They should not cost more than 125-150 bucks with their best processor built in. I think OEMs could design a really sleek system on this platform at a very low cost to the consumer. Anything else I feel is a waste of money. I am not even sure I would build a media staion with such system compared to the options out there on the market.
It may seem with all that I am bitter with the actual product but that's not the case. I just think the marketing is wrong as it makes no sense compared to the options a consumer has when they are spending their money.
I suggest skipping this purchase if you are considering it.
I almost forgot to mention some things that are positive for this platform. It does support USB3 and Sata 6. This is something the older platform does not have but that does not take away from my opinion as far as your other options on the market.
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