Long time forum reader, first time posting...
So I've been thinking of upgrading my CPU and possibly motherboard. I currently have an Asus Essentio 1330 with a Phenom II X6 1035T. It's been great and still runs well. It seems, however, that time might be catching up with it and some games either stutter or freeze for a little while...specifically, (sometimes) World of Warships stutters (but not often). The most intensive game I own is SW Battlefront...it will freeze for a little while in the beginning of levels (training levels, haven't actually ventured past that to the live multiplayer at all yet) and it seems to take a little while for it to catch up. I upgraded the video card from an AMD HD 6970 to an R9 380 for the purpose of playing Battlefront. Once it catches its breath, the game runs the rest of the level smoothly with no problems. I'm thinking there's perhaps a CPU bottleneck going on.
I run my rig for games (1080p is good enough for me), internet research, streaming Netflix and other videos...nothing extremely intensive/hungry. It usually runs very stable.
But I believe it may be time to upgrade. I've read things here and there about how an X6 1100T performs the same or better than the current FX series. So I'm stuck between just doing the 1100T or upgrading the motherboard and grabbing the FX-8350 instead. I'm also aware of likely having to reactivate Windows no matter which upgrade I may take.
Are there opinions between these choices? Or should I upgrade at all/would it make that much of a breathtaking difference? CPU Boss seems to take a dim view and recommend the i5 in the graphs instead (which I find odd considering I didn't ask it about the i5 at any time) but I've also read in numerous places how biased/worthless that site is. Another set of benchmarks (which I believe I read here on Tom's) seems to consistently show the 8350 ahead of the 1100T in every graph...but again, I've also read on the forums here about how they're also near-equal, even as the Phenom series is fast approaching/has exceeded 5 years old. I'm in the AMD camp with limited budget and I have no desire to change things over to Intel...I'm not a fanboy but I guess I've had AMD stuff for too long and enjoy the stability of everything I've had of theirs so far, starting way back when with the Athlon x64 armed with WinXP.
Also, as an aside, the current MoBo originally had an attached HD 5750 when I bought it from Best Buy back in 2010 or 2011 with 1 GB GDDR5 in the PCI-E 2.0 slot aside from the onboard HD 3000 graphics (which I have only recently discovered how to disable due to it fighting for graphics control once I installed new R9 card). Ever since I replaced the 5750 with the 6970, the machine will delay itself for roughly 60 seconds with a blinking cursor on a black screen after the initial Asus/BIOS messages screen before going past that delay (a paused BIOS screen perhaps?) and proceeding to boot Windows, with which it has no problem doing once it gets to that point. It never did that with the 5750 installed but has done so ever since being replaced. Not a big deal as I've tolerated it for nearly 3 years, but is there something that could be done to make it go straight to booting Windows again without the pause? Adding anything else (drives, RAM, etc) after the fact/enabling or disabling onboard graphics has neither helped nor hindered the situation.
If it helps, basic Specs:
Asus Essentio CG 1330 (Phenom II X6 1035T BE)
16GB RAM (DDR-3 1333, which is the fastest RAM the board supports)
Corsair GS-700 power supply
AMD MSI R9 380 GPU (4 GB Version)
Windows 7 64-bit Home Edition
Thanks in advance!
So I've been thinking of upgrading my CPU and possibly motherboard. I currently have an Asus Essentio 1330 with a Phenom II X6 1035T. It's been great and still runs well. It seems, however, that time might be catching up with it and some games either stutter or freeze for a little while...specifically, (sometimes) World of Warships stutters (but not often). The most intensive game I own is SW Battlefront...it will freeze for a little while in the beginning of levels (training levels, haven't actually ventured past that to the live multiplayer at all yet) and it seems to take a little while for it to catch up. I upgraded the video card from an AMD HD 6970 to an R9 380 for the purpose of playing Battlefront. Once it catches its breath, the game runs the rest of the level smoothly with no problems. I'm thinking there's perhaps a CPU bottleneck going on.
I run my rig for games (1080p is good enough for me), internet research, streaming Netflix and other videos...nothing extremely intensive/hungry. It usually runs very stable.
But I believe it may be time to upgrade. I've read things here and there about how an X6 1100T performs the same or better than the current FX series. So I'm stuck between just doing the 1100T or upgrading the motherboard and grabbing the FX-8350 instead. I'm also aware of likely having to reactivate Windows no matter which upgrade I may take.
Are there opinions between these choices? Or should I upgrade at all/would it make that much of a breathtaking difference? CPU Boss seems to take a dim view and recommend the i5 in the graphs instead (which I find odd considering I didn't ask it about the i5 at any time) but I've also read in numerous places how biased/worthless that site is. Another set of benchmarks (which I believe I read here on Tom's) seems to consistently show the 8350 ahead of the 1100T in every graph...but again, I've also read on the forums here about how they're also near-equal, even as the Phenom series is fast approaching/has exceeded 5 years old. I'm in the AMD camp with limited budget and I have no desire to change things over to Intel...I'm not a fanboy but I guess I've had AMD stuff for too long and enjoy the stability of everything I've had of theirs so far, starting way back when with the Athlon x64 armed with WinXP.
Also, as an aside, the current MoBo originally had an attached HD 5750 when I bought it from Best Buy back in 2010 or 2011 with 1 GB GDDR5 in the PCI-E 2.0 slot aside from the onboard HD 3000 graphics (which I have only recently discovered how to disable due to it fighting for graphics control once I installed new R9 card). Ever since I replaced the 5750 with the 6970, the machine will delay itself for roughly 60 seconds with a blinking cursor on a black screen after the initial Asus/BIOS messages screen before going past that delay (a paused BIOS screen perhaps?) and proceeding to boot Windows, with which it has no problem doing once it gets to that point. It never did that with the 5750 installed but has done so ever since being replaced. Not a big deal as I've tolerated it for nearly 3 years, but is there something that could be done to make it go straight to booting Windows again without the pause? Adding anything else (drives, RAM, etc) after the fact/enabling or disabling onboard graphics has neither helped nor hindered the situation.
If it helps, basic Specs:
Asus Essentio CG 1330 (Phenom II X6 1035T BE)
16GB RAM (DDR-3 1333, which is the fastest RAM the board supports)
Corsair GS-700 power supply
AMD MSI R9 380 GPU (4 GB Version)
Windows 7 64-bit Home Edition
Thanks in advance!