There is really no reason on the AMD platform to search for a motherboard with a price higher than $100-$120. The best thing to do is to search for the best value under that $100 limit.
Spending $190 for an AM3+ motherboard, no matter how good this is, it's unfortunately pointless with Piledriver cores. Spending those $100 extra on an Intel processor is more logical.
The same is true with FM2+. The fact that the highest models have only 4 cores, or to be more precise, 2 modules, negates any value that a hi end motherboard can offer.
I agree that spending $190 on AM3+ doesn't make a lot of sense. Boards with a 770 chipset can be had in the $40 range (the Gigabyte USB3 board for example), and won't perform significantly different. A $40 board and a $99 FX-6300 processor is a pretty good budget machine. On certain workloads like video encoding it will outperform anything I know of at the same price.
AM3+ is a dead platform, they haven't launched a genuinely new chip design since Vishera in October 2012. Kavari on FM2+ makes sense, but only for low-end systems and then only if you use the integrated graphics. The second you have a little more money or a dedicated GPU it just makes no sense.
AM3+ does make sense if you keep the cost for the motherboard low. A 6300 or a 8320 does offer great value. On FM2+ platform, quad core cpus like 740 or 750K, do make sense. They are cheap and they offer good multithreading performance. If you are going to use a gpu like a 260X or a 750Ti or even a 270, one of the cheap FM2 quad cores is a good option.
The problem with AMD is that it doesn't push at least one platform. On AM3+ they keep old cores. No Steamroller, no Excavator. On FM2+ they still haven't replaced all their Richland/Trinity models with Kaveri. I don't know how much money they save by keeping Richland in the market, I only know that the platform and all new stuff like Trueaudio, GCN, Mantle of HSA lose because of this tactic. Also a 840 at the price of a 740 would have been a much more competitive chip against Pentium. Someone completely moron who should have been fired by now and also sued for damages has persuaded the other morons in AMD's board to keep limited Kaveri models in the market, thinking that this way they are forcing people to pay extra for Kaveri models. Well, most people either don't pay for Kaveri and don't upgrade, or they are going to Intel. Also it is completely and utterly stupid that we haven't seen Beema models on AM1.
AMD's management is like trying to sabotage the company in every way possible. I am not sure if they artificially keep the company's value low, hopping someone to come and buy them.
I don't think it's happening artificially; probably, it's just they are shooting "themselves in the foot" with these attempts to "save" (continue keeping old tech for a while, already having new tech at their disposal), as you already pointed out. Personally, because of this ongoing mismanagement for years, I lost faith in anything x86-64-related from AMD long time ago and moved to i7. However, in contrast, their discrete GPUs are really good for the money. I hope, at least, they'll continue to properly develop and release new discrete GPUs in the future.
I honestly think all the old-cores are still there because those chips have already been produced and are sitting around gathering dust. AMD just isn't moving product when it comes to CPUs.
AM3+ really is dead, the chips are not competitive with Intel's chips in any segment. Single-threaded, even cheap i3s beat the high-end AM3+ chips and at that point there just isn't a reason to consider them because you can get a better chip for the price. The closest they can get is competitive multi-threaded performance, and then only in integer processing and frankly everything that's extremely threaded is going to need a more powerful chip anyway. The "High End" AM3+ chips use so much power you need liquid-cooling to keep them from burning up. With a similar water-cooling rig and a i5 k-series part you can overclock it 500-1000Mhz and totally blow that AMD chip out of the water (because it's still faster even at stock).
I've run a lot of numbers and if you're talking about gaming as soon as you add any GPU into the mix the Intel option gets higher framerates. AMD's integrated GPU scores much better, but the CPU performance in games isn't good because games rely on per thread performance.
AMD hasn't really been competitive since the Athlon 64 generation (where they were ahead of Intel), since Intel implemented its tick/tock strategy they're been ahead the whole time. Frankly, steamroller is a failed design that they thought they could scale to super-high frequencies (6Ghz+) and it turns out that after a certain point it just consumes massively more power.
AMD doesn't have a chance unless they get out a better architecture, god knows if they'll even manage that. I've been hoping they're actually spending all their development money on a better CPU design while putting out all these crappy steamroller-derived chips but I'm not holding my breath.
You're right for not holding your breath, CPU development takes a long long time. Just look at how long Intel had to ride out the Pentium 4 even after it was a clear failure that could never achieve its goals. We only got Core architecture as soon as we did because Intel had parallel development of the Pentium M at the same time which is what Core was based on. That and Intel vastly has more resources so they can recover much faster than what AMD can do in their current predicament.
Limited resources is also likely why we are not seeing Steamroller and on AM3+ or a whole new socket as dedicated performance CPU part or in the server. There would likely be a 5-15% performance boost but even that wouldn't put them where they need to be vs. Intel. And while they need to move parts they also have to look at the long play and that has to be a new micro architecture which they probably knew once the original Bulldozer core was tapped out. Personally I think we'll see something interesting in late 2015-16 if for no other reason Jim Keller left a very lucrative position to join back up.
Having said all that the current 8xxx AM3+ CPUs are not bad at all for the price if you can load up the cores. Great for video editing and other similar tasks and honestly plenty fast for most single threaded work. Power consumption is also a bit over blown when you think about how much time your CPU really spends under full load and the fact that the AMD parts idle quite well. The only issue is you do need a fairly massive cool to deal with that heat when the CPU is loaded but that's something most people do on Intel platforms as well.
You meant, "Bulldozer-derived", I guess: Bulldozer (only in first gen FX CPU) -> Piledriver (in Trinity APU, Richland APU and in second gen FX CPU) -> Steamroller (only in Kaveri APU) -> (to be released) Excavator (AFAIK, only in Carrizo APU)
But whatever the name, it doesn't change the situation, so I fully agree with you. This "construction equipment" is all pretty slow in any single threaded code - no better than almost 6 year old 45 nm Phenom II (K10.5 core) clock per clock. Besides, these "construction machines" are very power hungry at high clocks above 4 GHz (FX-9370 & FX-9590 have formal 220W TDP). That's why a lot of people switched to Intel in recent years (myself included).
It's funny if not insane that AMD has seen what Pentium 4 did to Intel and 5 years latter, someone with no brain, thought that AMD could produce it's own Pentium 4 and succeed where Intel failed. I bought a Thuban the next day I saw the first Bulldozer review.
Here in Canada the difference (pricing) between a the PentiumG 3258 and the 860K is 10 bucks. I actually went the Pentium route for my GF's build.. which was a mistake since she can't play DragonAge Inquisition (had to upgrade to a i5) but I built a system for a buddy with the 860K and he plays it fine. Kinda ticks me off lol..
At the end of the day I don't think it really matters, Amd is very competitive with Intel in the lower tiers. Lots of options on all sides.
That is the sad thing,all the fanboys will hound every forum on the planet screaming that Intel has higher IPC and actually stop people from buying a budget AMD processor,when in reality they are fine products that perform well compared to the competition in a majority of cases. Then the bitch about AMD not being strong enough to compete against Intel.So moronic it's mid-boggling. You want better AMD products.....SUPPORT them!
There is just one potential problem with the mantra "Don's support big greedy Intel; support small and good AMD instead". The problem is, specifically with AMD of recent, if you support them, there is still no guarantee, that they will come up with better (CPU) products (GPUs are always OK). Say, I supported them in the past buying both their Phenom 9950 and Phenom II 940 on desktop, and their Turion II and so on on the laptop (and their Radeons both on desktop and laptop all the time). So what? Later they came up with their own 8-threaded version of Pentium 4 (in a sense), known as Bulldozer FX-8150...
FM2+ ITX is still interesting, but only if you don't have room for a dual slot graphics card. If you do have room for a dual slot graphics card, like a GTX 750Ti low profile or GTX 970 shorty, then there's no point going for FM2+.
To this day I still can't find an AMD Micro-ATX board more powerful and feature-rich than my Asus M5A88-M, first released in May 2011. Why is this so AMD? Why?!! Intel's more powerful micro-ATX boards are indeed more expensive, but at least they exist. I no longer have much need for full-sized ATX builds, but when I upgrade I definitely don't want my system to be less powerful than my current one, especially not if the motherboard is almost 4 years old.
It's not so, actually; FM2+ with Kaveri is a good option in budgetary and/or compact segment, if it is intended to be used with its integrated GCN GPU (and no discrete GPU is used).
An FX6300 or FX8320 with said AM3+ motherboard is still a better bang for the buck compared to a newer i3 or i5 platform. Going with the AMD motherboard you could save some serious money for a better GPU or you could go with the Intel choice and get a slightly faster CPU but a significantly worse GPU.
It's just not true, the single thread performance is so bad that AMD is simply a poor choice for gaming. It can be useful in some niche, heavily threaded scenarios, and the concept of the APU is decent, although I don't think AMD have gifted one with a strong enough GPU yet, and RAM speed is an issue there too.
I want AMD to succeed, but let's not overplay the strength of their current hand.
Provided you have a decent SSD and standard 8G memory.. most people would be hard pressed to tell much of a difference between AMD/Intel processors in standard usage situations. (not talking enthusiasts or professionals here..)
That's been a criticism for many in the laptop area with AMD having a pretty decent platform but the OEMs pairing it all with sub par specs which cripples the system in other ways and makes for a fairly crappy laptop.
I noticed that most of the AMD GPU testing is done on Intel platforms. As AM3+ platform owner, I discovered incompatibility (one freeze per hour in 2D ) between R7 260X and Asrock 880G pro3. Moreover the main board needed a beta bios (promptly provided by TS of Asrock, kudos to them) just to be able to use the GPU (else error 97). Would it be because older chipset (880G/SB850) and newer Radeon don't understand each other? I'd really like to know why and what can be done to solve it, but honest I lost my trust in AMD and plan to switch to Intel.
1. Supposedly, if it's the motherboard issue, your issue has to do with either specific ASRock BIOS issue or PCI Express 3.0/2.0 compatibility issue (which shouldn't be the case - the M/B and GFX card, generally, should be compatible), because R7 260X is PCI Express 3.0 (all AMD discrete GCN GPU boards are, since Tahiti), and your ASRock board is PCI Express 2.0.
2. Most of AMD GPU testing is done on Intel platforms these days, because Intel CPUs are WAY faster per thread than anything AMD offers, and all modern Intel platforms are PCI Express 3.0 compliant. Say, I have Z87-based Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H M/B, and it's proven to work flawlessly with HD 7950 (Tahiti Pro) board and R9 290 (Hawaii Pro) board (in PCI Express 3.0 x16 mode with both gfx cards). So, yes, the current state of things is discrete AMD GPUs work better on Intel platforms.
If I were building a budget gaming machine today it would use the Motherboard featured for MSI in this round-up and a 860K Processor. I am not sure if the move to utilizing more than 2 cores is something that's going to be common but You can't play Dragon Age Inquisition on a i3 or a G3258.. You can however play it on a 860K. (not sure about something like a A-8 7600 mind you.. as I am not even sure that's really a Quad)
FYI, AMD's 900 chipset is the 800 series, the difference is support for AM3+ bulldozer's. So it's a 2009 chipset that was outdated in 2010, being stuck with PCIe 2.0 and USB 3.0. Actually it's worse as the 900 are 65nm with 2400 HT while many of the 800's are 55nm using 2600 HT.
I fanboy'd AMD buying the FX-4300 on a 970. My wife got the i3-4130 at about the same price, better performance, almost half the power. 95w CPU was hard for me to swallow, and now AMD has the balls to classify 95w CPU as low power!
At least when I bought the AMD 245 a few years earlier (same chipset!) I didn't feel like I was losing out. This holiday season I jumped back in hoping for an upgrade(been watching all year) but the only thing is the FX-8370e but chances are it wont improve a thing. I'm now looking at Intel's i5-4130.
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yannigr2 - Thursday, December 4, 2014 - link
There is really no reason on the AMD platform to search for a motherboard with a price higher than $100-$120. The best thing to do is to search for the best value under that $100 limit.Spending $190 for an AM3+ motherboard, no matter how good this is, it's unfortunately pointless with Piledriver cores. Spending those $100 extra on an Intel processor is more logical.
The same is true with FM2+. The fact that the highest models have only 4 cores, or to be more precise, 2 modules, negates any value that a hi end motherboard can offer.
barleyguy - Thursday, December 4, 2014 - link
I agree that spending $190 on AM3+ doesn't make a lot of sense. Boards with a 770 chipset can be had in the $40 range (the Gigabyte USB3 board for example), and won't perform significantly different. A $40 board and a $99 FX-6300 processor is a pretty good budget machine. On certain workloads like video encoding it will outperform anything I know of at the same price.Flunk - Thursday, December 4, 2014 - link
AM3+ is a dead platform, they haven't launched a genuinely new chip design since Vishera in October 2012. Kavari on FM2+ makes sense, but only for low-end systems and then only if you use the integrated graphics. The second you have a little more money or a dedicated GPU it just makes no sense.yannigr2 - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
AM3+ does make sense if you keep the cost for the motherboard low. A 6300 or a 8320 does offer great value.On FM2+ platform, quad core cpus like 740 or 750K, do make sense. They are cheap and they offer good multithreading performance. If you are going to use a gpu like a 260X or a 750Ti or even a 270, one of the cheap FM2 quad cores is a good option.
The problem with AMD is that it doesn't push at least one platform. On AM3+ they keep old cores. No Steamroller, no Excavator. On FM2+ they still haven't replaced all their Richland/Trinity models with Kaveri. I don't know how much money they save by keeping Richland in the market, I only know that the platform and all new stuff like Trueaudio, GCN, Mantle of HSA lose because of this tactic. Also a 840 at the price of a 740 would have been a much more competitive chip against Pentium. Someone completely moron who should have been fired by now and also sued for damages has persuaded the other morons in AMD's board to keep limited Kaveri models in the market, thinking that this way they are forcing people to pay extra for Kaveri models. Well, most people either don't pay for Kaveri and don't upgrade, or they are going to Intel. Also it is completely and utterly stupid that we haven't seen Beema models on AM1.
AMD's management is like trying to sabotage the company in every way possible. I am not sure if they artificially keep the company's value low, hopping someone to come and buy them.
TiGr1982 - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
I don't think it's happening artificially; probably, it's just they are shooting "themselves in the foot" with these attempts to "save" (continue keeping old tech for a while, already having new tech at their disposal), as you already pointed out.Personally, because of this ongoing mismanagement for years, I lost faith in anything x86-64-related from AMD long time ago and moved to i7. However, in contrast, their discrete GPUs are really good for the money. I hope, at least, they'll continue to properly develop and release new discrete GPUs in the future.
Flunk - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
I honestly think all the old-cores are still there because those chips have already been produced and are sitting around gathering dust. AMD just isn't moving product when it comes to CPUs.AM3+ really is dead, the chips are not competitive with Intel's chips in any segment. Single-threaded, even cheap i3s beat the high-end AM3+ chips and at that point there just isn't a reason to consider them because you can get a better chip for the price. The closest they can get is competitive multi-threaded performance, and then only in integer processing and frankly everything that's extremely threaded is going to need a more powerful chip anyway. The "High End" AM3+ chips use so much power you need liquid-cooling to keep them from burning up. With a similar water-cooling rig and a i5 k-series part you can overclock it 500-1000Mhz and totally blow that AMD chip out of the water (because it's still faster even at stock).
I've run a lot of numbers and if you're talking about gaming as soon as you add any GPU into the mix the Intel option gets higher framerates. AMD's integrated GPU scores much better, but the CPU performance in games isn't good because games rely on per thread performance.
AMD hasn't really been competitive since the Athlon 64 generation (where they were ahead of Intel), since Intel implemented its tick/tock strategy they're been ahead the whole time. Frankly, steamroller is a failed design that they thought they could scale to super-high frequencies (6Ghz+) and it turns out that after a certain point it just consumes massively more power.
AMD doesn't have a chance unless they get out a better architecture, god knows if they'll even manage that. I've been hoping they're actually spending all their development money on a better CPU design while putting out all these crappy steamroller-derived chips but I'm not holding my breath.
Operandi - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
You're right for not holding your breath, CPU development takes a long long time. Just look at how long Intel had to ride out the Pentium 4 even after it was a clear failure that could never achieve its goals. We only got Core architecture as soon as we did because Intel had parallel development of the Pentium M at the same time which is what Core was based on. That and Intel vastly has more resources so they can recover much faster than what AMD can do in their current predicament.Limited resources is also likely why we are not seeing Steamroller and on AM3+ or a whole new socket as dedicated performance CPU part or in the server. There would likely be a 5-15% performance boost but even that wouldn't put them where they need to be vs. Intel. And while they need to move parts they also have to look at the long play and that has to be a new micro architecture which they probably knew once the original Bulldozer core was tapped out. Personally I think we'll see something interesting in late 2015-16 if for no other reason Jim Keller left a very lucrative position to join back up.
Having said all that the current 8xxx AM3+ CPUs are not bad at all for the price if you can load up the cores. Great for video editing and other similar tasks and honestly plenty fast for most single threaded work. Power consumption is also a bit over blown when you think about how much time your CPU really spends under full load and the fact that the AMD parts idle quite well. The only issue is you do need a fairly massive cool to deal with that heat when the CPU is loaded but that's something most people do on Intel platforms as well.
TiGr1982 - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
You meant, "Bulldozer-derived", I guess:Bulldozer (only in first gen FX CPU) ->
Piledriver (in Trinity APU, Richland APU and in second gen FX CPU) ->
Steamroller (only in Kaveri APU) ->
(to be released) Excavator (AFAIK, only in Carrizo APU)
But whatever the name, it doesn't change the situation, so I fully agree with you.
This "construction equipment" is all pretty slow in any single threaded code - no better than almost 6 year old 45 nm Phenom II (K10.5 core) clock per clock. Besides, these "construction machines" are very power hungry at high clocks above 4 GHz (FX-9370 & FX-9590 have formal 220W TDP). That's why a lot of people switched to Intel in recent years (myself included).
yannigr2 - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
It's funny if not insane that AMD has seen what Pentium 4 did to Intel and 5 years latter, someone with no brain, thought that AMD could produce it's own Pentium 4 and succeed where Intel failed.I bought a Thuban the next day I saw the first Bulldozer review.
just4U - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
Here in Canada the difference (pricing) between a the PentiumG 3258 and the 860K is 10 bucks. I actually went the Pentium route for my GF's build.. which was a mistake since she can't play DragonAge Inquisition (had to upgrade to a i5) but I built a system for a buddy with the 860K and he plays it fine. Kinda ticks me off lol..At the end of the day I don't think it really matters, Amd is very competitive with Intel in the lower tiers. Lots of options on all sides.
Redwoodz - Sunday, December 7, 2014 - link
That is the sad thing,all the fanboys will hound every forum on the planet screaming that Intel has higher IPC and actually stop people from buying a budget AMD processor,when in reality they are fine products that perform well compared to the competition in a majority of cases. Then the bitch about AMD not being strong enough to compete against Intel.So moronic it's mid-boggling. You want better AMD products.....SUPPORT them!TiGr1982 - Sunday, December 7, 2014 - link
There is just one potential problem with the mantra "Don's support big greedy Intel; support small and good AMD instead". The problem is, specifically with AMD of recent, if you support them, there is still no guarantee, that they will come up with better (CPU) products (GPUs are always OK). Say, I supported them in the past buying both their Phenom 9950 and Phenom II 940 on desktop, and their Turion II and so on on the laptop (and their Radeons both on desktop and laptop all the time). So what? Later they came up with their own 8-threaded version of Pentium 4 (in a sense), known as Bulldozer FX-8150...meacupla - Thursday, December 4, 2014 - link
FM2+ ITX is still interesting, but only if you don't have room for a dual slot graphics card.If you do have room for a dual slot graphics card, like a GTX 750Ti low profile or GTX 970 shorty, then there's no point going for FM2+.
merikafyeah - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
To this day I still can't find an AMD Micro-ATX board more powerful and feature-rich than my Asus M5A88-M, first released in May 2011. Why is this so AMD? Why?!! Intel's more powerful micro-ATX boards are indeed more expensive, but at least they exist. I no longer have much need for full-sized ATX builds, but when I upgrade I definitely don't want my system to be less powerful than my current one, especially not if the motherboard is almost 4 years old.piroroadkill - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
This was a trick article, because there is no need for a guide on AMD motherboards, since there's no good reason to buy an AMD CPU at the moment.yannigr2 - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
Enjoy your expensive Intel motherboard with your even more expensive Intel cpu and let others decide about the value of the AMD platform.TiGr1982 - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
It's not so, actually; FM2+ with Kaveri is a good option in budgetary and/or compact segment, if it is intended to be used with its integrated GCN GPU (and no discrete GPU is used).Cryio - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
An FX6300 or FX8320 with said AM3+ motherboard is still a better bang for the buck compared to a newer i3 or i5 platform. Going with the AMD motherboard you could save some serious money for a better GPU or you could go with the Intel choice and get a slightly faster CPU but a significantly worse GPU.piroroadkill - Saturday, December 6, 2014 - link
It's just not true, the single thread performance is so bad that AMD is simply a poor choice for gaming. It can be useful in some niche, heavily threaded scenarios, and the concept of the APU is decent, although I don't think AMD have gifted one with a strong enough GPU yet, and RAM speed is an issue there too.I want AMD to succeed, but let's not overplay the strength of their current hand.
just4U - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
Provided you have a decent SSD and standard 8G memory.. most people would be hard pressed to tell much of a difference between AMD/Intel processors in standard usage situations. (not talking enthusiasts or professionals here..)That's been a criticism for many in the laptop area with AMD having a pretty decent platform but the OEMs pairing it all with sub par specs which cripples the system in other ways and makes for a fairly crappy laptop.
Scannall - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
Actually, for an inexpensive HTPC using an AMD APU is the best way to go.ACUand - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
I noticed that most of the AMD GPU testing is done on Intel platforms. As AM3+ platform owner, I discovered incompatibility (one freeze per hour in 2D ) between R7 260X and Asrock 880G pro3.Moreover the main board needed a beta bios (promptly provided by TS of Asrock, kudos to them) just to be able to use the GPU (else error 97). Would it be because older chipset (880G/SB850) and newer Radeon don't understand each other? I'd really like to know why and what can be done to solve it, but honest I lost my trust in AMD and plan to switch to Intel.
TiGr1982 - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
1. Supposedly, if it's the motherboard issue, your issue has to do with either specific ASRock BIOS issue or PCI Express 3.0/2.0 compatibility issue (which shouldn't be the case - the M/B and GFX card, generally, should be compatible), because R7 260X is PCI Express 3.0 (all AMD discrete GCN GPU boards are, since Tahiti), and your ASRock board is PCI Express 2.0.2. Most of AMD GPU testing is done on Intel platforms these days, because Intel CPUs are WAY faster per thread than anything AMD offers, and all modern Intel platforms are PCI Express 3.0 compliant. Say, I have Z87-based Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H M/B, and it's proven to work flawlessly with HD 7950 (Tahiti Pro) board and R9 290 (Hawaii Pro) board (in PCI Express 3.0 x16 mode with both gfx cards).
So, yes, the current state of things is discrete AMD GPUs work better on Intel platforms.
just4U - Friday, December 5, 2014 - link
If I were building a budget gaming machine today it would use the Motherboard featured for MSI in this round-up and a 860K Processor. I am not sure if the move to utilizing more than 2 cores is something that's going to be common but You can't play Dragon Age Inquisition on a i3 or a G3258.. You can however play it on a 860K. (not sure about something like a A-8 7600 mind you.. as I am not even sure that's really a Quad)Guph - Tuesday, December 30, 2014 - link
FYI, AMD's 900 chipset is the 800 series, the difference is support for AM3+ bulldozer's. So it's a 2009 chipset that was outdated in 2010, being stuck with PCIe 2.0 and USB 3.0. Actually it's worse as the 900 are 65nm with 2400 HT while many of the 800's are 55nm using 2600 HT.I fanboy'd AMD buying the FX-4300 on a 970. My wife got the i3-4130 at about the same price, better performance, almost half the power. 95w CPU was hard for me to swallow, and now AMD has the balls to classify 95w CPU as low power!
At least when I bought the AMD 245 a few years earlier (same chipset!) I didn't feel like I was losing out. This holiday season I jumped back in hoping for an upgrade(been watching all year) but the only thing is the FX-8370e but chances are it wont improve a thing. I'm now looking at Intel's i5-4130.