Upgrade advice.

chrismon

Hey guys.
You helped me build a gaming PC 3 years ago which served me well.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=82015154
Shes starting to show her age when its comes to newer games like Witcher 3 etc so I'm looking to upgrade her a bit.

Would a new graphics card be good enough and maybe another 8GB of ram?
I haven't over clocked my CPU yet as I hadn't needed to until now.


Heres my current setup.

BitFenix Merc Alpha
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W
ASRock 970 Extreme3, AM3+, ATX
AMD FX-6300 Prozessor, Boxed, Sockel AM3+
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 13 Pro
8GB-Kit G.Skill RipJaws PC3-8500U CL7
Club 3D Radeon HD 7850 royalKing, 2GB GDDR5
Crucial M4 128GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5")
WD Caviar Green 2TB Sata 6Gb/s

Ste_JDM

What's your budget?

Here's the thing about your build, the CPU socket has reached end of life a few years back meaning AMD are not releasing new CPUs for this socket. In saying that though you could upgrade to a FX 900 series but to be honest it wont be worth it.

8GB of RAM is still good enough for now, I'd not worry. The only games I've faced that will take use of more than 8GB are GTA V and Star Citizen.

GPU wise, yeah it's old now and Witcher 3 would not enjoy it.

The Witcher 3 is a demanding game, even with my high end setup.


If I were you, I would save up money for a new CPU/Motherboard, possibly the Skylake series from Intel and a decent GPU around the AMD RX 480 // upcoming 1060.

Say about 700 give or take.

TerrorFirmer

An AMD 480 or possibly upcoming Nvidia GTX1060 will be excellent upgrades that will offer a huge boost at a sub €300 price point.

Then you can think about upgrading your CPU and board at a later date. It is showing it's age badly, the FX6300, and will be sub-par in some games, but on the whole, it'll get you through another while.

chrismon

Ste_JDM wrote: »

What's your budget?

Here's the thing about your build, the CPU socket has reached end of life a few years back meaning AMD are not releasing new CPUs for this socket. In saying that though you could upgrade to a FX 900 series but to be honest it wont be worth it.

8GB of RAM is still good enough for now, I'd not worry. The only games I've faced that will take use of more than 8GB are GTA V and Star Citizen.

GPU wise, yeah it's old now and Witcher 3 would not enjoy it.

The Witcher 3 is a demanding game, even with my high end setup.


If I were you, I would save up money for a new CPU/Motherboard, possibly the Skylake series from Intel and a decent GPU around the AMD RX 480 // upcoming 1060.

Say about 700 give or take.

I hadn't really thought about budget, wanted to see what I needed before deciding fully on a budget.

I think I'll start saving up for an upgrade, its a pity about the AMD socket, they were supposedly releasing higher end CPU's in 2013, that's one of the reasons I picked it but it never happened :rolleyes:

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

An AMD 480 or possibly upcoming Nvidia GTX1060 will be excellent upgrades that will offer a huge boost at a sub €300 price point.

Then you can think about upgrading your CPU and board at a later date. It is showing it's age badly, the FX6300, and will be sub-par in some games, but on the whole, it'll get you through another while.

Sounds like a plan, new GPU then start saving towards board/cpu upgrade.

I'll let the dust settle before deciding on what GPU to get, I don't have the money for a decent 4k monitor at the moment so 1080p will do for another while.

TerrorFirmer

Forget 4K unless you plan dropping €700+ on a GTX1080 at a minimum! 1440P is a much better choice, and would be driven well by a GTX1060 or AMD 480, and excellently by a GTX1070.

You could upgrade your CPU to an FX-8350 which is a good bit better but still overall, is a sub-par processor compared to Intel i5's. The FX-9590 is a joke, monsterous power requirements, needs a water cooler, and still performs worse than i5.

chrismon

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Forget 4K unless you plan dropping €700+ on a GTX1080 at a minimum! 1440P is a much better choice, and would be driven well by a GTX1060 or AMD 480, and excellently by a GTX1070.

You could upgrade your CPU to an FX-8350 which is a good bit better but still overall, is a sub-par processor compared to Intel i5's. The FX-9590 is a joke, monsterous power requirements, needs a water cooler, and still performs worse than i5.

Yeah 1440p is a better option alright, I agree, there's no point in upgrading to another AMD chip.

Any recommendations for a CPU/Motherboard?

Digital Solitude

I5 6500 with a B150 board should run you about €250

chrismon

Digital Solitude wrote: »

I5 6500 with a B150 board should run you about €250

That's not bad.
I'll have a look into them.
Might have a nice upgrade for 550ish.

Ste_JDM

chrismon wrote: »

I hadn't really thought about budget, wanted to see what I needed before deciding fully on a budget.

I think I'll start saving up for an upgrade, its a pity about the AMD socket, they were supposedly releasing higher end CPU's in 2013, that's one of the reasons I picked it but it never happened :rolleyes:



Sounds like a plan, new GPU then start saving towards board/cpu upgrade.

I'll let the dust settle before deciding on what GPU to get, I don't have the money for a decent 4k monitor at the moment so 1080p will do for another while.

I would follow TerrorFirmer's advice for now if you don't want to swap out the CPU Motherboard right now.

The 6300 will be a bottleneck is a few games even with the most powerful games but it's not a bad CPU either. AMD did release high-end CPUs in 2012-3 as the FX 9000 series but they did not merit the cost and the thermals were not great, they were just tweaked 8350s.

They are coming back with a new CPU and socket called ZEN and AM4 respectively but we have no benches, just rumours. It's good to wait for a CPU to be out at least 6 months before considering it.

For futureproofing, go Skylake, they are on a new Intel socket which will be kept around for 5 years or so.

But again, Budget it.

I would not be getting a powerhouse GPU for that 6300 knowing that it will be a year before I'd get a new CPU.

chrismon

Ste_JDM wrote: »

I would follow TerrorFirmer's advice for now if you don't want to swap out the CPU Motherboard right now.

The 6300 will be a bottleneck is a few games even with the most powerful games but it's not a bad CPU either. AMD did release high-end CPUs in 2012-3 as the FX 9000 series but they did not merit the cost and the thermals were not great, they were just tweaked 8350s.

They are coming back with a new CPU and socket called ZEN and AM4 respectively but we have no benches, just rumours. It's good to wait for a CPU to be out at least 6 months before considering it.

For futureproofing, go Skylake, they are on a new Intel socket which will be kept around for 5 years or so.

But again, Budget it.

I would not be getting a powerhouse GPU for that 6300 knowing that it will be a year before I'd get a new CPU.

That's a great post thanks.

I wouldn't be waiting a year to upgrade to the CPU after the GPU.
Thinking about it though it would be nice to do the whole lot together.

Cheers for the advice everyone.
I'm going to save up for a bit longer and I'll do the lot together.

MarkAnthony

In 20 years of building and upgrading my rigs I don't think I've ever upgraded a CPU without upgrading the mobo. I'd always treat the CPU and Mainboard as on unit for the purposes of an upgrade path tbh.

Venom

MarkAnthony wrote: »

In 20 years of building and upgrading my rigs I don't think I've ever upgraded a CPU without upgrading the mobo. I'd always treat the CPU and Mainboard as on unit for the purposes of an upgrade path tbh.

Same here. New CPU = new mobo every time in my book.