$200 to spend on hardware upgrade for old build

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ziggyzero

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Jul 20, 2012
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I have an old build specs as follows
phenom ii 965 BE 3.4 ghz
hyper 212+ cooler
M5A99X evo mobo
corsair gs 600 psu
vengeance 1600 8gb (2x4)
msi gtx 760 2gb

What is holding my computer back that i can upgrade
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

 
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Elemential

Elemential

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Jan 24, 2015
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Solution
herrwizo

herrwizo

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Feb 17, 2009
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The OP already has GTX 760, which is a better card than 260X. Please read thoroughly the original post before posting.

OP, your best bet is Nvidia 970. That PSU is of quite average quality, but this card goes easy on power and it should work fine. However, it exceeds your budget by $100. For $200, there is simply no card that would be a significant upgrade over your 760. GTX 960 is slightly better, so is Radeon 280X, but you need to step up to Radeon 290 or GTX 970 for a noticeable improvement.

Other option you have is to keep everything as it is and just get a new CPU, like FX 6300.
 
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ziggyzero

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Jul 20, 2012
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It is a gaming comp. That fx-6300 looks good and I've heard its a good upgrade as well, could my processor be bottle necking the performance, since i upgraded my graphics card from a 560 2gb to the gtx 760 It has not felt like much of a jump when gaming.
 
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herrwizo

herrwizo

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Feb 17, 2009
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It indeed is a bottleneck in CPU heavy games, but that won't be resolved much by going for FX 6300. It will be better, sure... just not a huge difference. The best performance in gaming terms come from Intel CPUs. Even Core i3. That would mean a new CPU and new mobo.
 
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ziggyzero

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Jul 20, 2012
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This is to be upgraded for my brother as I am going to be doing a fresh build later on this year, so if its in a reasonable price range to upgrade the mobo and change cpu to intel and a great performance boost I would really consider it.
Thanks for the quick responses btw guys.
 
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boosted1g

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Jun 12, 2013
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What you want to do is upgrade to an fx-8320 cpu. That will be a very big jump from your old phenom.
The fx-8320 will be better then a fx-6300 and better then a core i3.

Any GPU upgrade worth having will not only cost your full budget (if not more) but would not help you at all with your cpu bottlenecking you.



Now with all of that said, if you upgrading in a year then you should think about that.
Putting $130 into an AMD CPU when you going to upgrade to an intel is wastefull, so putting the $200 into an i3 and H97 board would be better spent, despite the decreased performance of an i3 vs an fx-8320 (both are a good step up from your phenom).
 
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herrwizo

herrwizo

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Feb 17, 2009
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For your budget, this is likely the best thing you can do for performance improvement in games and you also have a nice upgrade path. Core i3 is faster for gaming even than FX 8xxx series in a number of titles, in spite of being only dual core with 4 threads. And you can easily get i5 one day, or even i7.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4160 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor ($109.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock H97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($83.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $193.88
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-26 17:12 EDT-0400
 
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herrwizo

herrwizo

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Feb 17, 2009
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Yes, seriously. There are some things that go into FX8320 's favor, though:

a) no new motherboard needed
b) better for video editing and heavy multitasking
c) can be overclocked, in which case it indeed can be faster than i3

For gaming on stock frequency, in every single CPU-dependent game it loses to i3, which is a mere dual core with hyperthreading. Yes, that's how things these days are.

But you need to view this upgrade not as an "i3" nut "potential i5 and i7 later". With AM3+, you are at dead end in terms of upgrading. But if the OP has the money, sure thing... go with i5 man, whatever you can afford.
 
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