AMD A8 CPU and A75 mobo w/Win7 -- not a gamer. Thoughts?

I've finally got some money set aside to upgrade my Win7 system. It's running an ASUS mobo with an AMD Athlon X2 -- about 2.5 years old now. The system's always had problems, and I've decided to replace it, then do a return on the mobo because it's still under warranty, and that way I can have two relatively fresh systems. I'll probably run Ubuntu Linux on the second box.

So anyway I've started reading up on what's current this week, and came across info on the relatively new AMD A8 3850 APU and I've been liking what I've read so far. It seems to be intended primarily for gamers. Well, I don't do much gaming, but my work on this system is graphics intensive -- I use Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro a LOT -- and I will probably be working with video -- most likely HD video -- in the near future. So this is why I'm attracted to that CPU. I've researched various mb manufacturers and have come up with a few that seem to have the best offerings: ASUS, Asrock, and Gigabyte. From those three, I've selected the following candidates: the ASUS F1-A75-V Pro, the Asrock A75 Pro4, and the Gigabyte GA-A75-D3H. One of the things I require is a mb that has at least 3 PCI slots, which I need because of some legacy hardware that I still use often, and all three of the above mbs have the requisite number of slots.

One thing I'm not exactly clear on however, and this is where I'm hoping that somebody here can help, is whether or not I can use the mb's video without a graphics card. The specs on all three mbs indicate that they do not have onboard video, but each has both an analog and digital video port. Plus the APU has built-in Radeon graphics processing. AMD goes on to mention that, when a discrete Radeon graphics card is also installed, the APU and card work together to further increase graphics performance. In fact, the Radeon features of this chip kind of sound to me like when you'd used to buy an 8087 math coprocessor for the old IBM 8088 CPUs.

So anyway, can somebody here explain this clearly? E.g., will I get video if I hook my monitor up to the video connectors? Currently I've been using the video that's built into my system's mb and it works just fine for my needs, not being a gamer and all. I have a 22" AOC flat screen that I'm running at like 1680x1024 -- something like that, and it works well at that resolution.

Thanks in advance for any light you care to shed on this matter.

ratchetclan4 said:

from what i've read im guessing you need the APU's to run the intergrated graphics on the ASUS ones
ASUS F1-A75-V pro has "Integrated AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 Series Graphics in Llano APU"

on a website for the Gigabyte GA-A75-D3H
GByte GA-A75-D3H Motherboard Socket FM1 - Scan.co.uk

it has a green tick next to graphics onboard, so that might work

Thanks for your response. The ASUS quote you provided above is basically describing the onboard graphics processor in the A8 APU. I've checked the specs out on all three of the above mbs at a few different sites, though, and they all state that there is no built-in graphics. Which I find puzzling since there's both a VGA and a digital graphics port on each of these mbs. The website you've linked for the Gigabyte board is the first one I've seen that states it has graphics on board. But you'll note in the row just beneath where it mentions graphics connectors, it is blank. Puzzling.

I went to MicroCenter today and talked to one of those sales guys about the ASUS board and that A8 APU. After talking with him, I decided that I didn't really need that type of CPU because I'm not a gamer. I do some graphics processing, but it isn't the sort that taxes a CPU heavily -- I've been getting by just fine with my Athlon X2 7850 (an AM2 socket CPU) and an ASUS board with onboard video. So I decided instead to go with an ASRock 890GX Pro3 AM3+ board, which has onboad Radeon video, and an AMD Phenom II X4 840 CPU. The Phenom II costs about half as much as the A8, although the mbs cost the same. Saved me enough though where I could buy 8 gigs of RAM without sweating it.

So anyway, according to the sales guy I talked to, the Radeon 6000-series processor built into the A8-3850 chip acts just like a separate video card. So the video outs on the mb are outs for the processor side of the APU. The board also has some sort of crosslink feature between the APU and other discrete 6000-series Radeon cards as well. Apparently this configuration excels for gamers and those who do graphics intensive work that heavily tasks a CPU, like rendering, for example.