Conclusion; AMD Creates One of the Best
With Intel dominating the desktop processor market as of late, many potential buyers have been turned off by the lack of affordable upgrade options. Granted, the meaning of “affordable” will vary wildly depending upon your budget and the system’s end uses but there really aren’t many choices for budget-minded gamers who want to maximize their graphics processing budgets. Quad thread Skylake processors start at $120 for the i3-6300 and require investment into costly DDR4 while AMD’s alternatives either use an old architecture (990FX-based platforms) or incorporate a costly integrated GPU, making them just as expensive as those Skylake options.
The only other courses of action are to either move towards dual-thread territory with Intel’s Pentium series or take a long, hard look at AMD’s new Athlons. You may not believe it at first but choosing the latter solution requires surprisingly few sacrifices in both performance and overall system capabilities. That’s because the Athlon X4 880K is an impressive processor given its price of just $95 and AMD’s motherboard partners have made huge strides towards updating their wares with new connectivity and storage options.
Throughout this conclusion you’ll see me reference gaming quite often and there’s a good reason for this: it’s a category the X4 880K is uniquely suited for. Using the words Athlon and gaming in the same sentence may be sacrilege in some circles but I think differently. Let’s get into why.
The true value of the Athlon X4 880K boils down to what it’s being used for, or more aptly, what it shouldn’t be used for. For HTPC duties one of AMD’s APUs will likely be a suitable match despite their higher cost, the FX-series will provide better multi-threaded performance for users who focus on the parallel workloads found in professional applications and Intel’s i3, i5 and i7 Skylake processors are better at…well…everything. At first glance this situation leaves the Athlon as something of an outcast; it isn’t efficient, its core architecture is years behind Intel’s offerings and its single thread performance is facepalm worthy.
Where the Athlon X4 880K truly shines is as an affordable and adaptable mid-tier foundation upon which you can build a very capable gaming rig. The adaptable part of that equation comes from its four cores’ ability to provide benchmark numbers that –at times- approach more expensive Intel i3 CPUs. If there’s ever a need to transcode or run a quick video edit sans GPU acceleration, you can be confident there’s very little ground being lost against lower-end Skylake models. In those respects it also does better than any other product in AMD’s FM2+ lineup.
Another area of distinction is the X4 880K’s ability to overclock via a simple multiplier change which is something none of the Intel processors can lay claim to unless you spend a whopping $250 on an i5-6600K. The amount of overhead on our sample was quite limited but if your system needs an additional shot of adrenalin at some point, this Athlon will be more than happy to oblige.
Gaming is key here since today’s titles don’t require a huge outlay of CPU resources relative to the capabilities of modern processors, particularly as detail levels and resolutions increase. This may somewhat change as DX12’s concurrent multithreading technology comes into effect but quad core processors like the X4 880K should see their available resources better utilized, allowing for further distinction against dual core alternatives.
Even at 1080P a relatively powerful GTX 980 will become a framerate bottleneck long before many of the processors in this review. As a result the gap between higher end CPUs and something like the 880K shrinks to truly miniscule proportions when playing games at levels today’s PC gamers expect. Granted, the Athlon X4 may not be as “sexy” as the latest Skylake processors but purchasing one will likely result in higher in-game framerates provided the money saved is re-invested in a better graphics card.
And that’s what this review is really about isn’t it? Value and where funds are best spent when there’s a finite amount of money on the line. It’s all about proper expectation management when shopping for components in this category; miracles can’t be expected but a pleasant surprise might be right around the corner. If you want to use a dedicated graphics card to maximize gameplay framerates or GPU compute abilities the Athlon X4 880K feels like that perfect compromise between performance, raw speeds and overall platform cost.
Conclusion; AMD Creates One of the Best
With Intel dominating the desktop processor market as of late, many potential buyers have been turned off by the lack of affordable upgrade options. Granted, the meaning of “affordable” will vary wildly depending upon your budget and the system’s end uses but there really aren’t many choices for budget-minded gamers who want to maximize their graphics processing budgets. Quad thread Skylake processors start at $120 for the i3-6300 and require investment into costly DDR4 while AMD’s alternatives either use an old architecture (990FX-based platforms) or incorporate a costly integrated GPU, making them just as expensive as those Skylake options.
The only other courses of action are to either move towards dual-thread territory with Intel’s Pentium series or take a long, hard look at AMD’s new Athlons. You may not believe it at first but choosing the latter solution requires surprisingly few sacrifices in both performance and overall system capabilities. That’s because the Athlon X4 880K is an impressive processor given its price of just $95 and AMD’s motherboard partners have made huge strides towards updating their wares with new connectivity and storage options.
Throughout this conclusion you’ll see me reference gaming quite often and there’s a good reason for this: it’s a category the X4 880K is uniquely suited for. Using the words Athlon and gaming in the same sentence may be sacrilege in some circles but I think differently. Let’s get into why.
The true value of the Athlon X4 880K boils down to what it’s being used for, or more aptly, what it shouldn’t be used for. For HTPC duties one of AMD’s APUs will likely be a suitable match despite their higher cost, the FX-series will provide better multi-threaded performance for users who focus on the parallel workloads found in professional applications and Intel’s i3, i5 and i7 Skylake processors are better at…well…everything. At first glance this situation leaves the Athlon as something of an outcast; it isn’t efficient, its core architecture is years behind Intel’s offerings and its single thread performance is facepalm worthy.
Where the Athlon X4 880K truly shines is as an affordable and adaptable mid-tier foundation upon which you can build a very capable gaming rig. The adaptable part of that equation comes from its four cores’ ability to provide benchmark numbers that –at times- approach more expensive Intel i3 CPUs. If there’s ever a need to transcode or run a quick video edit sans GPU acceleration, you can be confident there’s very little ground being lost against lower-end Skylake models. In those respects it also does better than any other product in AMD’s FM2+ lineup.
Another area of distinction is the X4 880K’s ability to overclock via a simple multiplier change which is something none of the Intel processors can lay claim to unless you spend a whopping $250 on an i5-6600K. The amount of overhead on our sample was quite limited but if your system needs an additional shot of adrenalin at some point, this Athlon will be more than happy to oblige.
Gaming is key here since today’s titles don’t require a huge outlay of CPU resources relative to the capabilities of modern processors, particularly as detail levels and resolutions increase. This may somewhat change as DX12’s concurrent multithreading technology comes into effect but quad core processors like the X4 880K should see their available resources better utilized, allowing for further distinction against dual core alternatives.
Even at 1080P a relatively powerful GTX 980 will become a framerate bottleneck long before many of the processors in this review. As a result the gap between higher end CPUs and something like the 880K shrinks to truly miniscule proportions when playing games at levels today’s PC gamers expect. Granted, the Athlon X4 may not be as “sexy” as the latest Skylake processors but purchasing one will likely result in higher in-game framerates provided the money saved is re-invested in a better graphics card.
And that’s what this review is really about isn’t it? Value and where funds are best spent when there’s a finite amount of money on the line. It’s all about proper expectation management when shopping for components in this category; miracles can’t be expected but a pleasant surprise might be right around the corner. If you want to use a dedicated graphics card to maximize gameplay framerates or GPU compute abilities the Athlon X4 880K feels like that perfect compromise between performance, raw speeds and overall platform cost.
