APUs are they worth it?

[Super Smash Jordan]

I want to know if getting an APU is better than getting a CPU and GPU mostly to save me some money for my first PC build, can you guys please help me out here?

 

[Holo]

For a starter build that will be upgraded later, I would say that an apu is fine if you're on a budget. If you are willing to turn down the settings of your game, ranging from alot to a little, you should be fine. I do recommend upgrading to a gpu later, and you can still use the apu like a cpu. To be clear though, more intensive games like battle field 4 and the witcher 3, even on minimum settings, will make the apu struggle. If the games you play are like cod, minecraft, warframe, just nock the settings down some and you should get a decent gamplay around 30-40 fps. Minecraft you would early be able to go higher. My friend has a a4-7300 apu and he can do all of this with very few stutters in gameplay. Now back to the topic, do I recommend apu's, not unless you have a realy small buget. What I personally would do is get an i3 with at least 3.0ghz clock speed and pair it with a cheap gpu like a 950 or 960. A r7 370 would work as well. This would give you room to upgrade and wouldn't be to much of a hole on a budget build for $350-$450. It would also provide decent performance as long as the i3 is a newer one. If your budget is lower than that, then I would recommend an apu. If you have any other questions about it, just ask

 

[D4rkDragon]

As @Void said, APU is more of a choice if you're low on budget, since it combines both a CPU and a GPU. If you can afford spending more, I suggest you to go with a CPU + separated GPU. Otherwise, if you can't, and I think considering you're mentioning a PC build, you're speaking about a desktop PC, you could still go for an AMD A10-7670K or A8-7670K. They're quite decent considering the price (Graphics are R7, ok, it's starting to get a bit old, especially with the next Polaris GPUs, but better than nothing, and the CPU is a Quad-Core around 3 or 3.2GHz, which is enough to run most of today's games. Last time I checked the price (in Euro, since I'm in France), it was around €130 (~$150/160)).

Conclusion: Go for it if you absolutely need your computer as soon as possible without cashing too much, or wait to get a better processor, and a better graphic card (Plus, the Polaris GPUs AMD shown at E3 during the PC Gaming Show will be out soon, and apparently, they won't be that expensive (around €150-200 if I recall what I read on the French internets)).

 

[532]

I would say that you should wait till AMD's Zen lineup comes out, if you're budget-constrained. The current APU's are lackluster, even for low-settings 1080p gaming. If you wait till AMD comes out with the Zen APU's, you can expect performance similar to that of a console, which IMO is a great thing. If you do decide to upgrade, and you go with current APU's, you'll be bottlenecked by the APU, as they are really bad in terms of CPU performance. And, the AM3/AM3+ sockets are also "dead", as in no new CPU's will be made for them, so keep that in mind.

@D4rkDragon is correct. The new GPu's which are coming out start at MSRP $99, FOr the RX460 model, then $150 for the 470, and $199 for the 480 4GB version, and $229 for the 480's 8GB version. If you can wait, these GPu's will have immense performance increases over previous generations, for the same price, due to the smaller die size (14nm compared to previous 28 nm)

 

[frog]

I think an APU can be worth it because it combines the CPU and GPU/video chip into one processor which is cheaper than having a separate video card. The APU's GPU is usually faster than most Intel onboard graphics which sometimes have problems playing some games.

If you mostly play less intensive games like Minecraft, League of Legends, and Dota 2, an APU could be good enough for playing your games.