Advice on best upgrade for modern gaming on a reasonable budget

Carguys

Hi

I'd like to upgrade my machine using as many original parts as I can I'll post the current specs,

AMD FX Six Core Black Edition Gaming Desktop
Processor CPU: AMD FX6350 4.20Ghz68 Core
CPU Cooling: Arctic Performance Heatsink & Fan
Memory: 16GB DDR3 1866Mhz (8GBx2)
Motherboard: Gigabyte AM3+ 990
SSD Hard Disk: 128 GB SSD UDMA 600
Hard Disk 1: 1 Terabyte Hybrid with SSD Technology
Optical Drive: LiteOn 22X DVD Rewriter
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD R7 260 2GB
Sound Card: Realtek 8 Channel HD Audio
Wireless: 300 MBPS Wifi Included
Power Supply: Integrator 500 Watt 80+ Certified
Operating System: Windows 8.1 Standard 64 Bit
Surge Protection: TrickleStar 5 Way Surge Protection

I was thinking more ram and upgrade my gpu, but I'm open to any ideas, ideally I want to run games like X Plane 10/11 with high quality and 40+ ffs, I'm also going to get bigger SSD

Anything else I should consider like better processor to fit current board ?

Any advice welcome and suggestions on components

Thanks

Xenoronin

Stealing a response to a post very similar to yours

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

The FX-8350 is probably a cost effective upgrade - sell FX6300 for €60, pick up 8320/8350 for €120 - small money overall. Not as fast as a Skylake i5 but solid enough and it means you can hold up for Zen and Kabylake instead for a full upgrade, the release of both should drive prices down.

You might get a bit higher for the 6350, though I'm pretty sure that CPU just had a minor clock speed bump.

Really it's just your GPU that is holding this PC back. The R7 260 is very very weak. It's a media card, not a gaming card. Upgrade that to an RX470 4gb.

Your RAM is fine where it is. No upgrade will benefit you there.

Edit: Just to give some priority here, get the graphics card first and see how it works. Looking at the specs page for X Plane they are surprisingly high.

a Quad Core, 3.0 GHz or faster processor,
16-20 GB of RAM,
a high-performance, DirectX 11-capable video card with at least 4 GB of on-board, dedicated VRAM.

X-Plane depends most heavily on single thread CPU performance, but it will also take advantage of multiple cores or distinct processors—4 are recommended. 16 GB of RAM is usually adequate, but 20 GB may be needed for the most complex custom scenery packages. Likewise, highly detailed custom scenery can use as much as 4 GB of VRAM at the maximum settings.

TerrorFirmer

X-Plane would benefit majorly from a switch to Intel as single thread performance is vastly superior to AMD.

Should get a decent enough price for the FX6350, 16GB and 990 board that upgrading to an i5-6400/6500, 16GB DDR4 and H110M/H170M board shouldn't be too costly....but then there is always the new Zen/Kabylake stuff, which is a few months away.

Carguys

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

X-Plane would benefit majorly from a switch to Intel as single thread performance is vastly superior to AMD.

Should get a decent enough price for the FX6350, 16GB and 990 board that upgrading to an i5-6400/6500, 16GB DDR4 and H110M/H170M board shouldn't be too costly....but then there is always the new Zen/Kabylake stuff, which is a few months away.

Any suggestions on cheapest places to order parts for Intel build?

Thanks for help

Digital Solitude

Amazon, overclockers, scan or alternate

K.O.Kiki

Get an Intel Xeon 1231v3 with a Z97 motherboard.

This allows you to use your current RAM @ DDR3-1866 and gain a fast CPU with 4cores/8threads for less than an i7.