The biggest thing you'll be giving up is these APU's have a MUCH worse IPC than Intel chips. So some Intel dual-cores will actually be faster than the AMD quad core APU. However, it's going to be faster than your old machine, and as you've seen, they're cheap, so if you can live with the knowledge that your quad core is actually not all that incredibly powerful when compared to Intel dual cores, then there's absolutely no reason to not go with one. Generally speaking, if you are attempting to game, the APU's will overall beat an Intel chip due to how much better the integrated graphics are on the AMD's compared to the Intels. But pure CPU, the AMD doesn't have a chance.

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As Timothy Miller stated, IPC (instructions per cycle) are lower in the older AMD chips (the newer Ryzen chips are much better, but they don't have any APUs available yet). However, depending on the cost of the Intel equivalent, AMD may still be worth it.

Per this PC Mag review on the A8-7600, it was slower than the i3-4330, which I would assume was that chip's main competitor when released, in all tests except GPU performance (AMD was quite a bit better in that regard, almost doubling the score). But a quick check of Newegg shows the cheapest you can get a current i3 for is around $120. I'm not sure how much better the performance would be with the newer i3, but it would be up to you on whether the extra money would be worth it.

Since AMD released Ryzen on a new socket with much better performance than their old stuff, their old stuff is probably cheaper than normal "last generation" stuff, which might make that performance hit compared to an i3 more easy to swallow. And, as you said, anything you get now would likely be a substantial performance upgrade to what you're currently running.

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There are Nvidia cards with heat sinks instead of fans. A year or two ago I was shopping for a new card and found a Nvidia GeForce GT-730 with 2 gigs of ram at a good price in a local store. It wasn't until I got it home and opened the box that I noticed it had a heat sink instead of a fan and was smaller than any other graphics card I've ever owned. It sill fits into a PCI-e x16 slot.
BTW, the heat sink is so large it turns what should be a single slot width card in to a double slot width card, so you lose a slot.
OTOH, while recently shopping for a new motherboard I noticed the manufacturers are spacing the slots appropriately for the double widith video cards, i.e., there is not a slot immediately next to the first PCI-e x16 slot (on some m/b, not all).

As to AMD vs. Nvidia, I bought nothing but ATi (AMD now) for just about 25 years. About 5... closer to 6 years ago the ATi/AMD card died and all I could find in the local stores were Nvidia based cards. Bit the bullet and bought one. Best thing, video wise, I've ever done.
IMHO, if one is running Linux, their video should be Nvidia. Again, just my opinion, of course.

Hmm. I don't do gaming. I guess that negates that one perceived advantage. I run a VM or two and compile packages. Occasionally convert video files from one format to another. Otherwise just a basic user -- writing, editing text, listening to tunes, watching videos, surfing the web with Firefox, and checking mail with Thunderbird.

I have no significant complaints about my current system, despite the age. While possibly only my imagination, I seem to notice the system is a wee more sluggish with each Slackware release as kernels and other software changes. Hence the idea of getting something newer.

The "older" APUs don't seem as well future proofed as the Intel chips, although probably fine for my use case for the next few years. An AMD APU would be a noticeable leap over my current system. The low prices caught my eye because I could make that leap without pinching the wallet. Possibly the lower priced AMD speed improvements over my current system will be sufficient that I won't care much about the differences compared to the Intel chips.

I think that should be the foremost criterion: comparing to my current system.

I'll keep researching but the AMD APUs seem tempting.

I will look. Possibly the generation of Nvidia chips I had on my mobos were problematic (series 6, 7, and 8). Who knows, perhaps newer series are less prone to problems. All I know is I never once blinked with the three systems here running Intel video and that kind of thing impresses a person.

Perhaps the nouveau driver will be sufficient and I won't have to wrestle with proprietary drivers. Other than the VMs I don't do anything that is video intensive and nouveau should be good enough.

Sigh. Back to researching....

The Nvidia "Long Lived Branch" drivers have never presented a problem. They are easy to install and have always, "just worked." No fuss, no muss.
I could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time , but I have had the impression Nvidia provides better Linux support than their competition.

I totally agree with you... in regards to proprietary drivers. But AMD does a lot of work on the open-source drivers (both the radeon and amdgpu drivers) and it is miles ahead of nouveau. AMD's proprietary drivers work great when the stars are aligned, but they seem to refuse to support the latest versions of X. This is why you can't use the fglrx driver in 14.2, because X is too new, and you can't use amdgpu-pro in -current, again, because X is too new. Nvidia tends to add support for the latest X fairly quick, and seems to have the widest range of support. But, overall, AMD's open-source drivers are quite impressive and work great.

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Right here in the microcosm of this thread we have people touting Intel, AMD/ATi, and nVidia and I think that's a good thing. What graphics system one prefers depends to a great deal on how we use our computers and how much work we are willing to do to get what we want or need, and to some extent how much we are willing to spend to get that. Some don't seem to think graphics is very important and I find that hard to understand since so much of how we relate and what we work with is vision oriented, not to mention how much work is now shared between GPU and CPU in the SOHO/Desktop experience. I recall actually gasping out loud when I first booted up OS/2 with a then new Matrox Millenium card because of how sharp and clear fonts and colors were. Later I replaced that card with an nVidia card that actually didn't do as good a job in 2D and I was only pleased with the tradeoff because 3D acceleration was hugely better on the nVidia card. Had I not been also a gamer I would have gone back to the Matrox.

Now that so much more of the Web and even some WM/DEs employ advanced 3D work the situation is not as simple unless you work in CLI only. Then, all you need is a good 2D card. If you use a WM/DE like Blackbox or it's derivatives 2D is still the better choice. If you like Gnome, KDE, or even Xfce or any of their derivatives some 3D support is pretty much a requirement.

All I'm trying to say is that in threads like this we rarely know what others expect from their PCs or what experiences led to their particular brand loyalty. So the best advice is know what you want to do, and maybe a little guesswork at what you may want 5 years from now, and get what appears to give you that with that caveat of an eye on the future. Buy at least a little bit of "headroom" or you will likely have hamstrung your work environment if not your wallet. If OP is sold on strictly onboard Intel, odds are that suits his purpose, assuming he is aware of what he may be giving up and that may be very little considering we can buy cards today for $50 USD that outperform 10 year old cards that cost 5 times that back then.

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Well said!

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I was unaware of that, using only Nvidia and Intel the past many years. That does influence my thinking some. Thank you.

Yes, graphics are important, beginning with the drivers "just work."

For myself, as I don't do gaming, video rendering, 3D, CAD or the likes, I likely am looking for graphics that are "good enough." For the past many years all of my systems use onboard graphics. I have been content with that. Possibly though I don't know what I am missing by not using a discrete card. I am not against a discrete video card, especially if I want to tinker with pass-through with VMs, which is not a high priority, but for the most part I think onboard graphics fits my use case well enough.

In the end, onboard or discrete, all I want is not to have to deal with quirks and glitches. I still remember the days of manually tweaking xorg.conf files and mode lines. The stuff of nightmares!

There is no "loyalty" on my part, although I agree with the sentiment of what you said. For me the loyalty, if anything, is being able to use my computer. After 35 years of using them, I have grown weary of the continual tinkering required to get the damned things to "just work."

I started this thread with a presumption of not wanting to deal, at all, with proprietary drivers. Embedded therein was the presumption that with the computers I own, the onboard Intel video support has worked without issue. Whereas my boards with Nvidia have been a PITA in one way or another. Here is an example.

I am aware that these types of problems differ across motherboards, GPUs, desktop environments, different distros, different distro releases. The glitches people encounter is just maddening. And just in case somebody wants to play devil's advocate, yes, the same nonsense happens in Windows too -- just visit any Windows forum.

As this thread has progressed -- and I am grateful for all of the conversation, suggestions, and thought provoking comments, I have opened myself to not being so rigid as my original post. At this point, in some ways, I am now more confused because there are so many variables, of which graphics is just one.

Of course, the budget is limited, which eliminates a hell-bent approach of trying dozens of different boards and GPU options. The challenge is finding a congenial sweet spot and potential candidates living therein.

In an oddball "Maslow's Hierarchy" kind of sense, I do not need a new office desktop. I would like one though. My starting point seems to be simple: after using the same system for 10 years, just about anything I buy will be a magnitude or two faster. Possibly any discussion thereafter is little more than a classic separating of wheat and chaff. I don't know.

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This may be a bit off-topic, but given that some of the focus of this thread is on longevity, I'd like to share my experiences with selecting components for the long haul.

I built most of what I have now in December of 2015, and have incrementally improved it since then, as funds have become available. I am looking at graduation from university in December of this year, and soon the government will want its money back. Given that finding a job in my chosen field is not a given, I find myself needing to hold on to the vintage FX-8370 processor I purchased some time ago. To that end, I recently purchased a higher-end air cooler, replacing the stock AMD Wraith cooler, to help keep load temps down as I compile software (kernel,etc.) or do some gaming.

I have seen the reviews of Ryzen, and while the Bulldozer/Piledriver architecture glory days are long since past, for my work flow, the 8-core 4.0GHz processor is more than able to meet my needs, both now and in the foreseeable future. This has the splash-on effect of letting the new processor and motherboard architecture landscape mature in terms of pricing/performance, and Linux compatibility. Ryzen is still a brand-spanking new platform, and not all the quirks have been worked out.

For the future, I see my FX processor doing useful work 5+ years into the future. By such time, Ryzen should be well-matured, and I sincerely hope that AMD ends up giving Intel a serious run for its money with Ryzen. That would be major kick-ass!

Just my

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Regarding AMD/ATi open source drivers, I concur. I haven't own an ATi card since my ISA All-in-Wonder on a Tandy 8086 until recently I inherited one and was pleasantly shocked how well it functioned even for some YouTube videos.

While I am also a rather avid gamer I do enjoy solid 3D acceleration for X Compositors effects like animations, transparencies (and their control) etc. In short it makes my desaktop feel snappy and sets a tone for quick but deliberate working. I have never had problems with nVidia proprietary drivers that I can remember. In fact their documentation and control set made it easy to fix a bad monitor (well, bad EDID) even back in the somewhat nightmarish days of modelines and dual monitor difficulties. Somewhere between Slackware 12.2 and 13.0 it just got easy with very little required in xorg.conf.

I do exercise considerable brand loyalty because coming from OS/2 rather than Windows, shortly after Warp 3, nVidia was the only company providing and updating graphics drivers, since Matrox ceased after awhile. When I migrated to Linux the same was true. So I am very loyal and they've never let me down. On a philosophical level I think the GPL was intended to allow for a mix of Open and Proprietary and I still think such a mix is important to the industry as a whole.

Regarding budget that seems to me to be a non-issue for non-gamers since the level of quality of even onboard graphics (despite a little extra noise) is very high these days. If one prefers the cooler quieter environment possible with an add-in card, unless you consider 50 bucks a major expense it is absolutely phenomenal the level of performance that can now be bought at that level. Even hi Q brand names like Asus, Evga, Msi, Gigabyte, etc. offer selections in that 50 buck range that are either fanless or very quiet fan-cooled, sporting as much as 2GB VRam and Pascal cores. Most can outperform the venerable 8800 GTX that cost 300 bucks new back in the day. Such devices are even suitable for moderately taxing ultra-modern gaming but handle Desktop effects and videos as smooth as melted butter.

One word of caution - PCs of any quality experience more glitching if they run hot. Be cool! whatever it takes. I know I'm a cooling nut but I have a pro background in electronics and heat is The Enemy. My 760 GTX is currently running at 39C. Under severe strain it might top 53C at the very most and thats with a 2016 game with medium-high settings. I strongly recommend setting up lmsensors or in the case of nVidia, nvidia-settings, to monitor temps. Know what you're asking of your PC.

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Good point. Heat means energy consumption, which is something I want to limit. Reducing energy consumption is one reason I began using onboard graphics many years ago.

Yesterday I noticed modern discrete fanless graphic cards that the heat sinks are huge, as cwizardone mentioned. Looking a tad bit deeper I notice that larger PSUs are required/recommended even when the card is fanless. My guess is even when the graphics card is fanless a decent chassis fan is a must.

As I do not do anything that stresses graphics chips, I probably would not need to worry about the heat as critically as others. Nonetheless, a consideration point.

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I have some micro-mini PC devices that use heatsinks on the CPU and the powersupply. They work ok with Windows7 but get too hot running slackware64. such systems are ok for lab and office staff but not ok for me.

My luggable machine has a 30cm x 40cm footprint and fits into large laptop bag. It now has 5 fans. The 1000W power supply has a 12 cm fan, and there is a 13 cm fan blowing air down onto the m-itx motherboard. The asus-nvidia_960 display has its own 8 cm fan and the Beijing DeepCool Captain 240 liquid-cpu-cooler has 2 x 12 cm fans.

The i7-7700k is running at 5 GHz and the memory at 3200 Mhz. Since I added the liquid-cooler it never goes into thermal throttling or becomes unstable.

Liquid cooling of the CPU is much more effective than I imagined it might be.

@ upnort - Since we all know the cliche regarding "assume' I would very much like to know what temps your system reports under both average and high loads. Please do bear in mind that these points of heat are often literally microscopic and hundreds of times smaller than the sensors (which are also at considerable distance away from those points) which monitor them. Just because a manufacturer advertises that their chip won't self destruct until well over 100C doesn't mean it will last long or run with solid stability even at many degrees below that level. There is just no good justification on a SOHO/Desktop machine for allowing temps to exceed ~60C.... ever. If it's at 60C at the sensor you can bet it is MUCH higher at the sources.

@enorbet

I used to run the simple desktop monitor frequently until it quit working a few issues of -current ago.

i used my i7-4770k 8 threads to run clustalo aligning DNA sequences day after day and it would frequently get up to 100C when crunching those sequences and it never failed. I gave it to my daughter when her older PC motherboard died recently and got this i7-7700k which I have watercooled. I put watercooling on the older i7-4770k for her and it goes great. no problems of any kind in more than 3 years, but i did burn up several power supplies until I started using 1000 Watt powersupplies. I use m-itx motherboards on my personal machine because i lug it around asia with me.

What you say seems to make sense but I ran my i7 in the red zone for 3 to 4 years and it just kept on truckin'.

My justification for running 'er hot is that we had work to do, and if we burned it up, well...