Are APUs good for cassual gaming and which would you recommend?

[Lemonade1947]

Im planning on building a pc later this year/early next year.

Being that I want it up and running ASAP i looked into the getting an APU. This would hopefully allow me to play games at mid settings until i have saved for a high end graphics card.

I would love to know your thoughts on this

also the plan is to build a mini ITX rig, so any recommendations need to be FM2 plugs

 

[PP Mguire]

Need a budget.

The selection for mITX FM2 boards are very slim, even more slim than Intel. Thing is, depending on what games you intend on playing medium settings is probably not going to happen. Although the GPU put in an APU is a tad better, it's still an extremely low end GPU and almost no better than a Haswell 4600.

That being said, for future expandability it's wiser to grab an i3 4330 and ASRock B85m-ITX so that way there when you do get a high end graphics card you can then later on stick an Intel quad in there and be assured you're getting top end performance. On either IGP you're looking at 720p max resolution with medium or low settings to attain a stable smooth framerate.

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, the GT640 is more powerful than both the HD4600 found in Haswell CPUs, and the 8670D found in the 6800K APU. By a long shot. A GT640 can be had for less than 100 USD here, probably more like 60 pounds there. If you can afford that, you can still go an i3 route and have almost quite literally double the FPS than you would get from either IGP.