The fastest Athlon to date keeps pace with the FX CPUs in gaming for half the price, at least in our testing. We did some other less reliable tests that reflect a similar trend with gaming sessions in DOTA 2, CS:GO and No Man's Sky, and it would be fair to say that the Athlon x4 880K is capable at least of driving the upper mid-range graphics cards available right now. Baring that in mind, the saving made by opting for the 880K (and the generally lower cost/higher quality FM2+ motherboards) over competing CPUs/ platforms, is significant enough to make the budget stretch between choosing a GTX 970 and GTX 1060 at current prices.



There is no escaping the age of current AMD platforms and CPU architecture and their lamentable raw performance. Though this doesn't mean that the platform is redundant at all, especially for the sensible, value seeking gamer that wants pure gaming potential. Paired with a mid-range discrete graphics card, the AMD Athlon x4 880K represents good bang-for-buck considering it is capable of keeping pace in games with significantly pricier CPUs. Despite appearing to readily overclock, it is held back a little by its high temperatures and throttling so may not be quite the ideal chip for those wanting to find a free boost in performance, though experienced/enthusiast overclockers will readily take to the challenge to find its limitations.

If you are looking to build an all-rounder home PC system or HTPC, the Athlon may not be the best choice over competing offerings, as displayed in the PCMark8 tests compared to the APUs. Though for outright gaming it is hard to ignore the Athlon x4 880K and its bundled cooler. Some will argue that an Intel system will generally be the better option, but that will cost that little extra, especially to get a quad core/ 4 thread CPU, enough to make the difference in your choice of GPU when sticking to a budget.

The fastest Athlon to date represents superb value for gamers, freeing up more of that precious budget for a higher quality graphics card.



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