Help deciding better upgrade CPU or GPU

Dizzll

Honorable
Aug 9, 2013
18
0
10,510
Hey guys, you all seem to know your stuff. My neighbor has an AMD Athlon X2 250 (OC'd to 3.6ghz on stock voltage) system with a Geforce GTX 260. He is wanting to either upgrade to a FX-8350 or a GTX 770. The i5-3570 is out cuz he wants future upgradeable socket. In his case which would be a superior boost in performance. We play WoW together and he also plays sports games like madden on his computer. He's 18 and doesn't have cash so he only has about $400 to upgrade his system.
 

rystarz

Honorable
Aug 17, 2013
10
0
10,520
well with the amd athlon 250, i would say getting a gtx 770 is out of the question.

so the only course he can take is upgrading his cpu, now this very much depends on his motherboard. you can find this out by (assuming your on windows) start search dxdiag and hit enter

its most likely however his mobo is am3 only which means he is going to be very limited to upgrading his cpu.

its also worth noting AMD's sockets are very versatile its again very unlucky the next gen of CPU's from them will support any current motherboard he can buy on that budget.

Dont worry there is light out of this tunnel.

Wow is a very old game, and thanks to amd there are cpu solutions that will enable him to game and keep under budget.

i would recommend a Richland APU in this particular scenario. make sure if he does consider this the mhz of his ram is very important. (along with what the mobo can support)

this should keep him under the budget with room to upgrade in the future.

hope this helps.