No, I don't game on Linux... haven't really had any problems with free radeon drivers in the past though I understand some of the latest gpus aren't well supported, pretty sure the R7 is ok.
“Reptilians Rule the World, Moon Landing Was Fake”
I agree with Ant. If you're struggling to afford it, personally I'd drop the RAM to 8GB (tbh) and go for an SSD. RAM is easy to upgrade in the future, and you'll get a faster and more responsive system in general out of an SSD/8GB RAM than you will from a mechanical HDD and 16GB RAM.
75 bucks still won't buy much ssd here. What slows me down isn't booting or launching programs (both which I do infrequently), it's swap thrashing. So a small SSD might "feel" faster out of the box, I'm not sure that would translate into significant time savings for actual productive use moreso than lotta ram. I can wait for ssd prices to fall more before making the plunge.
“Reptilians Rule the World, Moon Landing Was Fake”
I would do that if I was going to keep my current, 2GB pc. For the stuff I do, 16GB it will rarely hit swap.
Anyhoo... PHEW! I was all set to wrap up the order, when I happened to notice the Athlon X4 processor was listed as "socket AM4". The selected motherboard is AM3+. X-S (the motherboard spec said it was compatible with "Athlon" processors)
The good news is, I found an AM4 mb that supports twice the memory (32G DDR4) and I can get a single, 16G stick for a bit more than 2x8G DDR2 (which would max out the other board). Also, AM4 is Ryzen compatible (for future upgrades). (dance)
“Reptilians Rule the World, Moon Landing Was Fake”
I'm usually pretty careful about buying new parts. I've been caught out by cannibalized parts (latest was trying to put "mac" memory in a pc, which is 1 notch off). Oh yeah, also had to put a new PSU into my case upside down.
“Florida Man Disguises Himself in Bull Costume as He Tries to Burn Down Former Lover’s House With Pasta Sauce”
I think part picking has come a long way, it's easier now than back in the day of Pentium 4s having specific RAM, DIP switches and the murky waters of setting IRQs for sound cards.
There are still a few gotchas, but there's a ton more resources to check you're getting it right.
Speaking of all this, I'm planning a PC upgrade for the missus. Custom PC this month featured an AMD APU build for under £400. I might hang on a month or two though, as they suggested you'd need to flash the motherboard's EFI to get it to recognise the CPU. Newer builds of the board should already have that in place. Not that I'm adverse to doing these things myself, but it keeps the onus on them to get it right and saves any returns/customer service hassle should the update go wrong for me.
Not got the parts list with me at work, but I'll see if I can find it tonight.
Placed the order after giving MrsD. a heads up. By waiting a day I saved another 5-bucks on the GPU! Now I've got to figure out a case (there are a couple of candidates home), and a Windows. Looks like I'm going to have a busy Easter.
“Florida Man Disguises Himself in Bull Costume as He Tries to Burn Down Former Lover’s House With Pasta Sauce”