Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Your question
Solved

Gaming PC Upgrade

Tags:
  • Gaming
  • Intel i7
  • AMD
  • CPUs
  • Components
  • GPUs
Last response: in Components
Share
August 19, 2014 7:41:18 AM

Hi,

Need some expert advice. I've recently got back into PC gaming and am slowly building my knowledge back up from 8 years of console gaming (my last PC gaming experience was saving my pennies as a poor university student to buy an 8800gts 320mb). So I bought myself the following system on eBay for £640:

Asrock 990fx Extreme 3 Motherboard
AMD FX-4100 @ 4.2ghz CPU
8gb Kingston Fury 1,866mhz DDR3 RAM
2 x R9 290 4,096MB
3 x 1TB HDD @ 7,200RPM
Blu-Ray RW (not sure of make)
DVD RW (again, not sure of make)
1,250 Watt Seasonic PSU

Been great for the two weeks I've had it but now I want more performance. I am debating between the following three options to upgrade further as I am only getting 86FPS on Unigine Heaven 4.0 and discovered this is low for the above spec. Please provide advice on the following upgrade options, or define a further one if you think they're moronic:

1) AMD FX-8350 CPU only

2) AMD FX-8350 + New Mobo (been told the Asrock board I have isn't great to support the 8350)

3) i7-4770K and same motherboard........JK, new one.

The prices are roughly £130, £200, £380 respectively for the above options. My biggest question is, am I going to have a noticeable FPS improvement on games (Crysis 3, Metro Last Light, Hitman Absolution etc.) between any of the options? Or will the crosffired R9 290's negate any noticeable difference between the CPU's? Also, will I need more RAM?


More about : gaming upgrade

a b à CPUs
August 19, 2014 7:44:56 AM

Just get an FX-8320 or 8350. You should notice quite a big performance increase with either of these. It's not worth buying a new motherboard, you won't see any in-game performance boost from this.

Oh, and if you went intel you should go for an i5 rather than an i7, they're a lot cheaper and have pretty much the same performance in games.
m
0
l
August 19, 2014 7:44:57 AM

The i7 4770k is the best option among all those, but why 4770k when you can get 4790k for the same price and better perfromance? and that PSU is Overkill
m
0
l
Related resources
a b 4 Gaming
August 19, 2014 7:45:05 AM

I would recommend 1) or getting a new h97/z97 motherboard and go for a 4690k i5
m
0
l
a b 4 Gaming
a b À AMD
a b à CPUs
August 19, 2014 7:46:20 AM

Wow...2 r 9 290s on a dual core fx... Get an fx 8320 and a solid state hard drive. Re install the OS onto the ssd and keep important and commonly used programs on it. That's the biggest performance boost you feel right away (in my opinion). Def get the fx 8320. Your board can handle it fine at stock and you can actually utilise SLI with 8 cores ..
m
1
l
August 19, 2014 8:18:04 AM

OK, thanks guys. Im going to order an 8350 today as it seems to be marginally the same price as the 8320. If the performance jump isn't as much as I'd hoped then I'll eBay it and then purchase an Intel solution.

I know it'll be a rough answer, but rough is fine: What kind of performance increase percentagge am I to expect going from the FX-4100 to the FX-8350? Currently averaging 55fps on Crysis 2 and 45 on Crysis 3 everything maxed.

And yes _Epix_, PSU is a bit of a monster, never seen one that wattage before.
m
0
l
a b 4 Gaming
a b À AMD
a b à CPUs
August 19, 2014 8:37:46 AM

Oh lord the 8350 will absolutely blow the he 4100 out of the wwater. Updated piledriver cores and 8 of em. Not all games ccurrently take advantage of that but they are starting to more and more.
m
1
l

Best solution

August 19, 2014 9:25:59 AM

SINCE YOU ALREADY HAVE GOOD MOTHR BOARD, WHY NOT GT ADVANTAGE OF IT??
since the CPU is not so escential on games but a 4100??? is like to hve a VW motor on a ferrari XD... so go for the FX 8350 or 8320 and also a good water cooling solution for a hardcore OC... this way any posible bottleneck will be avoided that way a cant say how much advantge you could win with the FX8350 or supperioirs like the 9xxx BUT ITS VERY PROBBLE THAT THE 8350 reach speed of 5GHz with water cooling...

the intel haswell chips provide a more stable FPS rate at this point but i think its too much inversion also you will need a good aftermark cooler even at stock speeds for gaming...
Share
!