AMD Athlon X4 860K CPU (AND Possibly Motherboard) Upgrade Suggestions

Trevroar · Jul 16, 2015

I recently (3 weeks ago) ordered and built this system below based off a users suggestions here on the forums.

CPU: AMD Athlon X4 860K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor ($68.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock FM2A88M PRO3+ Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard ($48.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($53.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($48.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 960 2GB SuperSC ACX 2.0+ Video Card ($199.99 @ Amazon)
Case: NZXT Source 210 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($32.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 520W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($57.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $511.82
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-07-16 19:23 EDT-0400

The problem is that I'm sorta getting the feeling that the processor is kinda dinky and am starting to contemplate if I should attempt a return and upgrade to a stronger model. It ran Arkham Kinight fairly well at high settings, does great with Dead Rising 3, H1Z1 is kinda meh... (These are all I've played so far....) But I'm a bit worried it wont be able to handle games too well in the near future.

Right now, my questions are, If I kept this mother board, whats the best AMD CPU that I could up grade to currently, and is AMD releasing anything stronger sometime soon.

Also, keeping withing a 200 price range or so, whats the best I could do swapping out the motherboard for a stronger series of AMD or Intel processor?

Any suggestions within a budget gaming mindframe is welcome.

All suggestions are welcome!

clutchc · Jul 16, 2015

You are already at the top of the food chain for that MB with the 860K. Moving to an Intel platform would be the best move. Or as a second choice, the AM3+ platform.
This board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157521
And this CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116995
...would come close to $200 and give you a CPU improvement over the 860K, while allowing for a CPU upgrade in the future.

But there's another aspect to consider. Your GTX 960 is a good match for the 860K. I had an 860K at 4.2GHz and an Evga GTX 960 FTW at 1480 MHz that produced a Firestrike score of 5970. I could game quite well with it. The point I'm trying to make is that it isn't JUST the 860K that is holding you back, The GTX 960 is only a mid range card too. Upgrading to an Intel platform alone still might leave you with the same results.

Karadjgne · Jul 16, 2015

The 860k is a pretty good processor and as said, a good match for the 960. A gtx 970 would be a little overpowering, whereas a r9 290 would be about as good as you could run, and still maintain some sort of balance. That would slightly improve gpu strong games, especially single player. For cpu intensive games like H1Z1 and/or most multi-player games, mmorpg's etc, you'll only see improvement by doing 1 of 2 options. Change out the mobo/cpu for Intel (somewhere between $400-$500) AM3+ (@$300) or OC. Intel will show the best improvement as it is considerably stronger in single thread performance, AM3+ is somewhat behind, but that too will take a really good OC and will make up for some of the single thread performance loss, and OC your cpu will show the lowest performance gain, but happens to be free and dependent only on cooling, motherboard and cpu lottery.

You can also OC the 960 for some gains, my Asus gtx660ti is OC above factory OC settings and currently enjoys stronger performance and scores than a stock Gigabyte G1 960 except for tessellation which it misses by 110 points. That's not too shabby considering a 960 is somewhere between a 760 and 770 in performance.

Norwood · Jan 4, 2016

For single thread performance, the 860K is currently the best AMD chip (excluding the fx9590, which is a power hungry monster and not that much faster - overclock the 860k and it will outperform the 9590 in single thread). The architecture is newer than the FX series and eliminates a bottleneck that was in the FX chips, so clock for clock it is faster and can use faster memory too.
The only advantage you would get from moving to AM3+ is more cores, not more speed.
The cheap option would be to get a good quality air cooler - such as the coolermaster hyper 212 evo for around £30 and overclock your 860k, 4.4ghz being about as far as you could go with air.

AMD is releasing 2 stronger chips, but both on a new socket - AM4. The first is based upon carrizo, the next generation of the same architecture of the 860k. Its maybe 10-15% faster clock for clock, and more efficient too. This is coming early 2016 by all accounts.
The 2nd new release is coming later in 2016 and is called Zen. This is also socket AM4 and is a completely new architecture that is designed to be 40% faster than carrizo, bringing it upto Intels levels again. So far the news is that Zen has met all internal expectations, so that speed increase looks real.

The only guaranteed option at this time is to go to Intel. Even an entry level dual core Intel will perform better in gaming by between 5 and 40% depending on the game than and 860k. At least in DX11, i haven't seen a direct comparison in DX12 games, which apparently utilize the AMD architecture better and bring them closer to the Intel chips.

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AMD Athlon X4 860K CPU (AND Possibly Motherboard) Upgrade Suggestions

Trevroar

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