Every gamer would love to run out and grab the most powerful processor around for their rig, but the reality of budgeting forces some tough calls. If you're trying to put together an inexpensive system, the AMD Athlon X4 880K offers solid performance for a price of only $95.
Despite the low price, the X4 880K is able to handle 1080p and even 1440p gaming. What's more, it can be overclocked to an impressive 4.5GHz with AMD's newest stock cooler for even better performance. It's not as well suited to more CPU-intensive tasks like video editing, so if that's going to be your focus, you may instead want to consider chips in AMD's FX line, or an Intel Core i3 or i5.
This processor meant for FM2+ motherboards rids itself of integrated graphics for better clock speeds (4GHz stock), and features four cores equipped for playing the newest games. There are a fair number of affordable FM2+ motherboards out there, making the addition of a graphics card to this processor more palatable for those on a tight budget.
One thing to note is that the FM2+ socket may be nearing the end of its run, so there are unlikely to be many upgrade options available in the future. That said, you can always upgrade your graphics card, and the X4 880K should be powerful enough to handle the CPU-side gaming requirements for the next couple of years.
The X4 880K hung tight with pricier A10 chips in performance testing, and as expected was a way behind FX and Intel Core i5 chips, since those cost more than $200. As mentioned, it struggled the most in multimedia tests. Still, for the price it performed well overall.
For more details, check out the AMD Athlon X4 880K review on our sister site, Computer Shopper.