When I get a full system in for review, typically I will find an Intel CPU lying at the heart of the system and whilst this is partly due to their high level of popularity,; along with their multitasking abilities – for some the overall cost factor can be a bit of an issue. Naturally this means that there is only one other route to go down and this is with AMD and their line of CPUs. From our own testing of AMD processors we know that they offer a slightly cheaper alternative to some of Intel’s top line chips – such as the i7-4770k, although we do find that in some tasks, they may struggle to keep up the blue teams performance. For gamers though, all-round performance is not the main priority – it’s having a system that can offer up a great level of gaming performance and for an affordable price.

Coming forward to the last few months, AMD recently announced the release of their latest CPU into the Piledriver group of FX chips – namely the FX-9590. Now like all new processor releases, it has come into the market with a mixed response from the enthusiast community, however it looks like it has proved its way and has settled itself down in the market as the new contender to Intel’s Ivy Bridge-E i7-4960X, offering a huge difference in price as we are used to seeing with AMD chips. We know as well that anyone looking for a high-end gaming system but on a tight budget is going to benefit from an AMD chip, although the trade-off is with performance in other workload areas as mentioned above.