Do I need to upgrade my CPU?

DarylDixon · Jun 22, 2016

Hi,

I'm about to upgrade my computer for gaming purposes. These are my current specs:

AMD Athlon X4 750K Quad Core Processor, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT

I have a small budget. I think the best option for a new GPU is a GeForce GTX 750 Ti gaming card. It's cheap and within my budget, and has good reviews. Now my question is, do I need to upgrade my CPU as well if I want to make good use of this gaming card? Keep in mind I'm a huge noob in this terrority, all I'm doing is choosing and ordering the parts and someone else is building my computer.

If I do need to upgrade the CPU, what would be a good card? I read the AMD FX 6300 would be pretty good and it's affordable, but I'm not sure if there's anything else I should consider.

MCID47 · Jun 22, 2016

If youre just going for 750ti, then your Athlon can handle it without any bottlenecking problems. But another choice, maybe you should go on for FX, Maybe 6xxx at least, or pick the mighty 8350 as well, for another upgrade in future.

DarylDixon · Jun 22, 2016

MCID47 :

Thank you! Would the FX 6300 increase the performance enough to make the $100 worth it or would it be barely noticable? 'Cause if it's barely noticable I'd rather wait a bit til I have more money and skip the 6300 altogether and go straight for the 8350, haha.

MCID47 · Jun 22, 2016

Yes FX 6300 offers more performance with 6-cores and 8350 with 8-core. Otherwise, athlon has 4 cores and if you are comparing to fx, its not comparable at all. Still, both is unlocked multiplier but different board sockets.

DarylDixon · Jun 22, 2016

MCID47 :

Awesome, guess I'm going for the 6300 for now, thank you for your help!

JQB45 · Jun 22, 2016

DarylDixon :

You still need to upgrade the video card. If you have to choose CPU or GPU upgrade go with the GPU.

I own the EVGA GTX 950 FTW - here is a similar EVGA 950 for not much more then a good 750ti.

http://pcpartpicker.com/product/FDx9TW/evga-video-card-02gp42956kr

DarylDixon · Jun 22, 2016

MCID47 :

JQB45 :

Yes, I'm definitely upgrading my gpu, the question was just about the cpu. Thank you for the suggestion, I'll check that one out as well!

JQB45 · Jun 22, 2016

I like the idea MCID47 suggested. Going with a 6300 or ideally an 8350. Both are good CPU's. Obviously you will get the best performance from the 8350 but even the 6300 outclasses the Athlon X4 750K by a good enough margin to make it a worthy update.

Here is a comparison of the 750K, 6300 and 8350 in a benchmark done by passmark.

http://cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp%5B%5D=1801&cmp%5B%5D=1781&cmp%5B%5D=1780

[strike]make sure you copy the entire link.[/strike]

DarylDixon · Jun 22, 2016

JQB45 :

Thank you for the link, it's very helpful!

uguv · Jun 22, 2016

I don't see if listed anywhere - what is your motherboard? Make sure the 6300/8350 is supported on your motherboard.

DarylDixon · Jun 22, 2016

uguv :

Ah yes, I'm not sure what model it is but the person who is building my PC said it has an FM2 socket, and I'm pretty sure I need an AM3+ one. Do you have any recommendations for motherboards that are cheap and work well with the gtx 750ti and fx 6300 combo?

Edit: They wrote down "fm2+/fm2 GA-F2A55m-HD2", not sure what it means or if i copied that correctly, their handwriting is a mess

Edit again: It's this one

gonf · Jun 22, 2016

the first thing i would do in your case is to upgrade the GPU first. go for the RX480 which come out end of this month it is only 200 buk. and yes your cpu will bottleneck the GPU. but it better to have your cpu bottleneck the GPU than with a CPU upgrade and you can't play anything after.
this way you can still play around with setting and play games with it.
if budget is short. go for the GPU than CPU/motherboard than SSD than ram than PSU. you should upgrade in that order.

and by the way. a FX8350 or FX6300 upgrade is not the best choice at this time. AMD should come out with their Zen in Q4 this year or Q1 next year. the FX8350/6300 is about 4 years old and they are at the end of their line. so if anything wait until than and go for the Zen cpu/motherboard or an intel CPU/motherboard would be ideal.

if you still want to upgrade to the FX8350 do consider 2nd hand cpu. there should be a lot of them in the market right now or soon caz of Zen.

teknobug · Jun 22, 2016

If you're on a small budget you could stick to the X4 750K for a while longer and just get the GTX950 or GTX750Ti Going from an X4 750K to an FX 6300 isn't going to be a big jump and a little bit of waste of time since AM3+ socket is pretty much dead, may as well wait for the AM4 announcement or save up more for the Intel Skylake/Kabylake path.

DarylDixon · Jun 22, 2016

(im on my phone and it wont let me quote for some reason)

@gonf and teknobug, my computer right now can barely handle any games so i really cant wait a while. besides, i genuinely cant afford anything new, even if i save up, i just cant afford to spend that much money just for casual gaming. but thanks for the suggestions anyway!

my builder is asking if theres a good fm2+ processor that works with the 750 ti gpu so i dont have to get a whole new motherboard? if anyone has an answer to this thatd be appreciated!

JQB45 · Jun 22, 2016

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($94.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock 970 EXTREME4 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($69.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $164.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-06-22 11:04 EDT-0400

uguv · Jun 22, 2016

DarylDixon :

You'd definitely need a new motherboard if you want to go with one of the FX processors. If you already own the x4 750X and that motherboard then I'd just try the 750 ti and see how your computer performs. You might also want to wait for the RX 480 to come out. If performance is too poor then you can upgrade the CPU and motherboard to either a FX chip or an Intel setup.

JQB45 · Jun 22, 2016

@DarylDixon - my builder is asking if theres a good fm2+ processor that works with the 750 ti gpu so i dont have to get a whole new motherboard? if anyone has an answer to this thatd be appreciated!

Athlon X4 760K is the best CPU you can get for that motherboard. The 760k is still slower then the 6300 in the passmark rating with a score of only: 4564.

gonf · Jun 22, 2016

the wait is til next week. the RX480 come out next week. if 2nd hand is what you are looking for. there should be people upgrading to the RX480 once it out. so you should still wait until than to get your video card.

DarylDixon · Jun 22, 2016

@gonf, wed rather not go for secondhand since we have very bad experience with it and wed want to be able to return the parts if they end up not being any good. thanks again for the suggestion though!

our current plan is to just go for the 750 ti gaming gpu and keep the current cpu and motherboard, and if that ends up not being good enough we are going to get an am3+ motherboard and the fx 6300 to go along with it

Do I need to upgrade my CPU?

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