TOP 5 AMD processors under $150

10 years ago, the FX chip line was AMD's biggest hit. Since then, AMD has released several not-so-successful models and has continued to keep the FX alive. But when the company announced the entry-level Ryzen series a couple of years ago, it seemed that old people didn't belong here anymore. But AMD did the wiser thing by updating the FX chips and sending them to the low-cost segment.

One of the most attractive options in terms of price and quality ratio among the entire FX family is the FX-4300, which for 3-4 years received the title of "people's" processor. Today it is positioned as a workhorse, but don't be fooled, because it has the legs of a thoroughbred horse: performant even by today's standards, 4 cores with a clock speed of 3.8 GHz are automatically overclocked to 4 GHz, and 4 MB of L3 cache was the norm yesterday for CPU of the average price segment. Plus, the FX-4300 has an unlocked multiplier, making it much easier to overclock.

Perhaps the only minus of the processor is the vague prospects for updating. Although AMD encourages manufacturers to keep the AM3 socket in mind, everyone is looking towards the newer AM4, and there are not as many motherboards supporting the previous platform as they were a couple of years ago. Therefore, here and now, the FX-4300 is primarily good as the basis of a solid home / office computer, which is not required to perform resource-intensive tasks like video rendering or run demanding games.

However, all of the above does not mean that games are his kryptonite. In past generation hits like Batman: Arkham City, Battlefield 4 and Resident Evil 5, the FX-4300 paired with a GTX 980-caliber graphics card delivers a stable 90-100 fps at high settings. Given that most people don't see much of a difference between Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 1 graphics, that's a great result. With very fresh games, everything is more difficult, since a lot depends on optimization in them. For example, if "Far Cry 5" at medium settings will work pretty fast, then "Project CARS 2" will noticeably slow down.

AMD A10-9700 is the optimal model in the new family of Bristol Ridge processors. Unlike the Ryzen 5 line, the A10-9700 boasts a built-in graphics accelerator that allows you not to buy a separate graphics card.

The built-in Radeon R7 video chip is quite fast and will allow you not only to run, but also comfortably play hits of the past like Fallout: New Vegas at medium graphics settings or go online to Dota 2, CS:GO and WoT. For Full HD resolution, the settings will have to be lowered to a minimum, but it is quite realistic to play.

The A10-9700 has at its disposal 4 twin cores of the Excavator architecture with a frequency of 3.5 GHz (auto-overclocking up to 3.8 GHz is provided) and a shared cache. The processor supports motherboards with a modern socket AM4, which greatly expands the scope for manoeuvre. If in the future the power of the chip ceases to be enough, then it can be painlessly replaced with a more performant Ryzen.

Considering the low price of $80, the A10-9700 can be a good base for both an office PC and a home theater or undemanding gaming station.

Fortunately, the chip received an updated VCE hardware video decoder with support for the latest x265 (HEVC) and VP9 codecs, which is used by default on YouTube.

Despite the release of the new Ryzen line, one of AMD's best-selling processors remains FX and specifically models with index "6" and "8". One of the most powerful among them is the FX-8370, the main advantage of which is the presence of eight cores at a fairly low price. The average price of the FX-8370 in online stores is just above $100, which makes it one of the best AMD processors for demanding PC games.

The FX-8370 is equipped with 8 cores with a frequency of 4 GHz, which, if necessary, are overclocked to 4.3 GHz using TurboCore technology. When overclocked manually, you can achieve even more impressive 4.6 – 4.7 GHz. However for this you will have to take care of installing a powerful cooler — right on the box, the manufacturer warns that the processor is quite hot. The FX-8370 is compatible with socket AM3+ motherboards and supports the still popular DDR3 memory.

The FX-8370 does not have an integrated graphics card, which helped keep the price of the processor below sea level. The logic here is quite simple: in addition to 8 performant cores, most people buy a separate graphics card, and the integrated one remains just for show.

Paired with a GTX 1060 or RX570 graphics card, this chip will allow you to comfortably play at medium-high graphics settings in demanding hits of the past generation like "Battlefield 1" and "Grand Theft Auto V". For completely fresh shooters like Far Cry 5 and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, this will not be enough, yet the last couple of years of the game have noticeably raised the bar of requirements. At the same time, you will feel the full power of 8 cores if you render video or write hits in Ableton with 99 plugins on the master bus.

For buyers who are not ready to overpay for new Rayzen technologies, AMD has released the junior Ryzen 3rd revision, which provides the user with the optimal 4 cores for today, sufficient power, support for the modern AM4 platform and the same 14 nm manufacturing process. And all this with a very affordable price tag.

In standard mode, the quad-core 1300X boasts a clock speed of 3.5 GHz, which automatically rises to 3.7 GHz under heavy loads. The temperature does not exceed 49°C even with a standard cooler, for which the processor can only be praised.

The main difference between the 1300X and older Ryzen models is the L3 cache cut to 8 MB and SMT multithreading disabled. On the one hand, this is a minus. On the other hand, the main competitor Intel i3-7350K has only 4 MB of L2 cache.

In general, the 1300X is capable of a lot for its price, and thanks to its good overclocking potential, it can successfully push not only with the new Core i3, but also with older processors from Intel like the i5-7400.

When overclocked to 3.8 GHz, the 1300X chip is only 5% behind the Intel Core i5-7400 in synthetic tests, and holds the same level in games. And this is an impressive 98 frames per second in Battlefield 1 at high graphics settings and Full HD resolution. Naturally, all this in the presence of a strong partner in the form of a graphics card of the caliber Radeon RX 560.

The AMD Ryzen 5 1600X is the youngest six-core processor based on the Zen architecture, which is a direct competitor to the "people's" Intel Core i5-7600K. But if the price of a chip from Intel is kept at the initial level of $220, AMD has gradually reduced its requests to a very tasty $160, which puts it in the “buy without hesitation” category.

The suffix "X" in the name of the chip means support for XFR technology, which automatically increases the processor frequency above the norm if the cooler allows it. The base frequencies of the 1600X are set at 3.6 GHz, when working in turbo mode, the clock frequency reaches 4.0 GHz. The volume of cache memory of the second level is 3072 KB.

Paired with a Radeon RX 570 -caliber graphics card, this processor handles power-hungry games like Doom with ease and delivers a stable 50 FPS on Ultra graphics settings in the latest Far Cry 5. For comparison, the Core i5-7600K in games shows approximately the same results, however lags behind in synthetic tests by an average of 20%.

But that is not all. The 1600X is a great option for building a PC with an eye for the future. It works with socket AM4 motherboards and supports AMD SMT multi-threading technology. Thanks to it, the chip can turn 6 physical cores into 12 virtual ones, evenly distributing the load between them. Even if these 12 threads are not needed very often now, in a couple of years they will certainly come in handy.

If we strictly adhere to the $150 low-cost stated in the title, then our choice will fall on the junior model of the line — AMD 1500X with a price tag of $145. It is made on the same 14 nm and has the same functionality as the older one, but cannot boast the same power — 4 cores instead of 6 and 2048 KB of L2 cache instead of 3072 KB. But its energy consumption is one and a half times lower.