Is adding GTX 970 with an AMD FX-6100 a good option?

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Deadite lord

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Jul 3, 2011
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Hello everyone, I was wanting to upgrade my AMD 6950 and was looking at picking up a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 G1 Gaming 4GB GDDR5. However, I was wondering about my motherboard being compatible with the card and the possibility of creating a bottleneck with my CPU. Here are my specs:

Motherboard: ASUS Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ AMD 990FX + SB950 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

CPU: AMD FX-6100 Zambezi 6-Core 3.3GHz Socket AM3+ 95W Desktop Processor FD6100WMGUSBX

I game on a 55 inch 1080p plasma so I'm looking at a card that can run games optimally at that resolution. Any help you all could provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
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There isn't anything special, just take the old one out, put the new one in, I'd wipe off the old thermal paste and put your old processor and heat sync in the box you get (you can give it to a friend looking to build)
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gibbly

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That CPU is really on the edge of what I would put with it, but it is enough for most games and on very taxing games the graphics card will probably dip below the frame rate cap imposed by your processor, at high settings at least, as long as the CPU frame cap is above 60 you'll be okay
 
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Deadite lord

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I have just enough points saved that I could buy the AMD 8350 if it would help a lot. How hard is it to swap out the CPU? I did build my PC a couple years ago, but it was my very first machine and I've never installed a CPU before then. Is there anything special that you do when removing and installing the new CPU?
 
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gibbly

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There isn't anything special, just take the old one out, put the new one in, I'd wipe off the old thermal paste and put your old processor and heat sync in the box you get (you can give it to a friend looking to build)
 
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bignastyid

bignastyid

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If you are have a cooler that's better than stock and plan on reusing it you will need some isopropyl alcohol to clean off the old thermal grease aswell as some replacement grease. If you are just going to use the stock fan that comes with the 8350 have you wont need any of that. I find its best to run the system for a little bit to get the thermal grease warm before removing the cpu to prevent the heatsink from sticking to the cpu.
 
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gibbly

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The 8350 will be a good upgrade, but it can't hurt to see how the 6100 performs first,
to see where your CPU will bottleneck put on whatever game you want and turn the settings all the way down and whatever frame rate you have there or maybe higher is what you'll be able to get on your new card but at higher settings, if you aren't satisfied with that frame rate upgrade, if you are satisfied with that frame rate in taxing games then you'll be fine for a while
 
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LeonXCG

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I have an MSI GTX 970 4GB Afterburner and an AMD FX-6100 and I get frame skips and low fps on Far Cry 4 and other games. I'm upgrading my CPU to an AMD FX-8350 since I've been having these problems, and from what I heard, the FX-8350 seems to run well with a GTX 970. I know that I'm having problems, because my friend play LoL at 200-250 fps with his GTX 750ti and I'm below 100 fps with my 970.
 
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Deadite lord

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I did the upgrade to the graphics card and CPU yesterday and everything appears to be running fine. Although I didn't stress test the CPU or mess around with the graphics card yet (I had to get ready for a New Year's Eve party), I ran the machine idle for 30 minutes and the FX-8350 temps ranged between 28 & 32 degrees. (Note: I am using a Corsair H80 to cool the CPU rather than the stock heat sink). Will put the graphics card and CPU through its paces tonight.
 
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Deadite lord

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Okay I ran some game benchmark utilities just to see the FPS increase and was wanting to verify if these speeds are what I should be expecting for my PC when running in 1080p with no overclocking?

Notes: BIOS and CPU were installed at stock settings and I've never adjusted them previously. Computer temps averaged around 35 - 40 degrees when the benchmarks ran so overheating doesn't seem to be a problem.

Tomb Raider (1080p, quality: ultimate with double buffer)

Max: 62.1
Average: 60
Min: 58.3

Bioshock Infinite (1080p, Quality: UltraDX11_DDOF)

Frame rates seemed to jump around from as high as 110 FPS to as low as 40. Panning was occasionally choppy (or perhaps stuttery is the better word) especially during the Welcome Center portion at the beginning of the benchmark. Note: I ran this benchmark with the GTX 970 and the 6100 CPU installed just to verify the card was running okay before adding the 8350 and the choppy stuttering appeared to occur at the same spots in the benchmark.

Sleeping Dogs (1080p, Extreme with High res texture pack)

Max: 73.5
Average: 55.7
Min: 37.5 (During the last part of the benchmark in the mansion I suspect. However, the benchmark on the whole ran very smooth like Tomb Raider with none of the stuttering in Bioshock Infinite)

Full PC specs:

MOBO: ASUS Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ AMD 990FX + SB950 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

CPU: FX 8350

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

Memory: CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model

GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 G1 Gaming 4GB GDDR5. (Current driver installed)

OS: Windows 7 Home
 
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