AMD Phenom II x4 965 Black Edition - Should I Upgrade for 2015 games?

Fragilicious · Jan 5, 2015

Hello Forum,

Undergoing an upgrade of my computer. So far the main parts for upgrade are a new graphics card or two (for crossfire) and some more RAM.

Question I have though is will my processor still be ok for another year, or should I upgrade that too?

I have (per the title) an AMD Phenom II x4 965 Black Edition, not overclocked with the Corsair H6 for cooling and the ASUS EVO M5A97 motherboard.

Thanks.

sincreator · Jan 5, 2015

It depends on what video card you are using. If it's 280x or lower from AMD or GTX 770 or lower from Nvidia you shouldn't see a bottleneck that is CPU related. If you plan to have a higher end card then those two I would suggest a CPU upgrade. Can you list your complete specs?

exroofer · Jan 5, 2015

Open up the northbridge to 2600 ish, OC it to 3.8-4.0 , and be happy with it for another year. Something like a 35% gain in cpu thruput over stock.
Or trade out the mobo/cpu to go with your new gpu. Yes the 965 will hold back a high end video card a bit, but not hugely,

If hanging on to your 965 means you have a lot more budget for video card, I say go for it. Then swap the cpu/mobo out later, instead of trying to do it all at once and having to make budget compromises on both sides.

Make sure your current psu will handle any new video card(s) you plan on buying.
Be prepared for answers telling you the 965 is bad, because that is not true. Still a decent performer.
Unless you WANT to spend $350-$400 on cpu/mobo. AND the same or more on video card.

aztec_scribe · Jan 14, 2015

I had the same experience as Link from the future; I upgraded from the Phenom II x4 965 Black Edition to a fx-6350 and the performance improvement was noticeable. The upgrade was super cheap as well, only 100 euros.

I have this cpu along with an R9 290 and I currently play Far Cry 4 at Ultra settings with smooth performance.

Also worth bearing in mind is that the current console generation is using 8 core cpus so more and more games are gong to be optimised for that kind of setup, I'm actually a little worried it was a bad idea not to go for a full on fx-8350 but then again that is a lot more expensive as an upgrade (in euro at least).

aztec_scribe · Feb 4, 2015

It does not matter about more slower cores. You want strong IPC and per core performance. That's why a Intel core i5 and even i3 makes the FX 9590 look stupid. [/quotemsg]

An i3 does not make an fx 9590 look stupid!

aztec_scribe · Feb 5, 2015

Link from the future :

Well I say that because a core i3 keeps up pretty well with the FX 9590 in gaming apps.
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/62166-amd-fx-9590-review-piledriver-5ghz-11.html
[/quotemsg]

It's true an i3 is pretty good considering it's a low end intel chip, but, I honestly believe that new games are going to take more advantage of multiple threads. So despite the fact that current games don't show huge speed improvements when you compare the two future games will.

Of course though this will only further the gap between and i7 and an FX 8350.

aztec_scribe · Feb 18, 2015

Link from the future :

True

It sucks as one day I'm going to have to stump up 350 euros to do the upgrade, but for the moment my rig to run everything so I'm going to hold out on that expensive jump to Intel till it's obvious I need to (probably when fallout 4 is released and it gets ultra res textures from the community).

WhiteSnake91 · Feb 18, 2015

Follow a good overclocking guide and get it as close as possible to 4ghz and you'll be good for awhile. My bro for awhile now has gamed on an AMD a10 5800k apu...4.2ghz turbo boost quad core, no L3 cache, pretty much an Athlon x4 750k, and paired with a 660ti superclocked 2gb GPU, he has been able to play everything I have with my much stronger i5 3570k build on 1080p ultra as well, and if not maxed out, a few useless/non major things tweaked like the taxing msaa turned off.

I don't think an upgrade to a 6300 would be worth it, I'm very curious as to how the 6300 will age, it's better than a quad, but, somebody might as well spend the 20 more bucks for the 8 core 8320 honestly.

What's your current specs? You don't need more than 8gb of ram, speed honestly doesn't matter for gaming, and a good GPU and you're set. What's your current GPU and what are you upgrading to? I'd highly recommend getting a single strong GPU over dual. Get a gtx 770 4gb if possible, or gtx 970 and you'll be good for years. An r9 290 has dropped in price alot and is very strong too.

If you want to save money, consider the AMD GPU too. An hd 7950 goes for little over 100 bucks on ebay and can play all games at 1080p ultra barring msaa comfortably, or at the worst high.

Even the low power 750ti is no slouch tbh, I've seen many reviews and videos showcasing gameplay of it handling demanding stuff like BF4 multiplayer on 1080p ultra

in short, it doesn't take as much to play stuff on 1080p ultra/high as people like to portray online.

WhiteSnake91 · Feb 18, 2015

? Their picture shows the minimum for the fx 6300 as 44fps and average as 69.8fps

"CPU Benchmarks

In our final benchmark, we consider CPU performance using the GeForce GTX 980 at 1920x1080 with ultra details enabled to see how the top detail level affects a variety of processors."

edit, I thought you meant the 6300 got 25fps while playing.......

44 isn't bad, 69.8 as an average is good too, for somebody on a budget the fx 6300 is decent. I don't notice much of a real world difference between my i5 pc and 1055t Phenom x6 pc, but I'm not into rts or mmo

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