Upgrade Which Part First

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ethan_5

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I bought a PC to completely replace my obsolete console. It's getting to the point where it is annoying slow and I'm not sure what the problem is. I need it to play some of the newest games but it can't seem to handle the load. Which components would you recommend replacing at this time to keep up with the newer/flashier games?

CPU: AMD A10-7850K (This has 12 compute cores but i don't know what this means)

Graphics: 4096MB ATI AMD Radeon R7 370 Series (Sapphire/PCPartner)

Motherboard: LENOVO Bantry CRB (Not sure if this is what you're looking for)

Thanks for any help you give!
 
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KittyFish62
If you're going to play the newest games, definitely get an intel cpu, that cpu, well, actually apu, is terrible for gaming. Get a i5 or i7 and it should one smoothly. Also, how many hz is your monitor? That may be causing it to be slow too.
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KittyFish62

KittyFish62

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If you're going to play the newest games, definitely get an intel cpu, that cpu, well, actually apu, is terrible for gaming. Get a i5 or i7 and it should one smoothly. Also, how many hz is your monitor? That may be causing it to be slow too.
 
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Martell1977

Martell1977

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What is the make and model of the PC you are looking to upgrade?

The first thing to do would be to add a discrete GPU, but there are factors like the PSU and availability of a PCIe x16 slot. Also, the type of case, as Small form Factor cases only fit certain cards, while mid-towers are much more flexible.

What is you budget for the upgrade?

Also, "12 compute cores" means that it has 4 CPU cores(2 modules, 2 cores per module) + 8 iGPU cores and they can work together.
 
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Samaratin

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Looking where the R7 370 falls on the Tom's GPU Hierarchy chart, that would seem like the place to upgrade.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

An RX 480 would be a considerable improvement.

Given that your A10-7850k is near the top for that socket, there really isnt an upgrade path for CPU/Motherboard without switching platforms. Your A10 has a cpu benchmark of about 5500 which puts it inline with an i3-6100.

I would suggest upgrading GPU, and wait for CPU/Motherboard upgrade til February or a bit later. That's when AMD's new Ryzen architecture comes out, which will probably make a lot of current prices fluctuate lower.
 
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rwayne

rwayne

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I think Samaratin just gave you a lot of good advice.

I would start of with the video card. If you have a single 1080P monitor then an RX 480 or a GTX 1060 (6GB) would be a good upgrade.

After doing so I think I would wait for the Ryzen CPU chips to come out. Even if you are not interested in AMD I would still wait for their release as it should lower the price of all chips (30 to 90 days later)

I would also recommend getting an SSD for the boot drive if you don't already have one. It won't help game play that much but it will definitely speed of your system and give you a better experience in general.
 
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ethan_5

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Thanks for they answer. I am using a 1920x1080 monitor Hz. I'll definitely consider an Intel CPU.
 
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ethan_5

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It is a Lenovo Erazor. The card i listed is a separate card i put in myself. It also has integrated graphics but it is very insignificant.(About half gig of memory) I learned about crossfire today so maybe that'll help?
 
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Martell1977

Martell1977

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The crossfire you are referring to won't work with your GPU as it's too powerful. The CrossfireX is meant to help boost weaker GPU's like the R7 240.

I'd recommend you try a game and watch your CPU, GPU and RAM usage to find where the bottleneck is. But it is likely the CPU (as other suggested), but you could probably benefit from a RAM upgrade(depending on how much you have now). For that, use the system scanner by Crucial Memory:
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/systemscanner
to find out how much RAM your motherboard supports, and all the details to upgrade.

If the CPU or GPU is near 100%, while the other is much less, that is what needs upgrading first.

As for a possible CPU/motherboard/RAM upgrade, wait until AMD's Ryzen is released. Either Intel will lower their prices or AMD will have great performance and price. Initial info (from AMD) is limited, but if accurate, Ryzen is comparable to Intel's offerings.
 
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Samaratin

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the crossfire with the integrated graphics only worked with the lower end products and it really didn't do much at all compared to a standalone gpu back then, we're talking like 750ti performance levels i think. Typically the best thing to do is go with the best single gpu you can afford. The RX 480 is a really good card for 1080p. There were 2 models on sale for $169 the past couple days on NewEgg, at the same time i did see some RX470s that had a free game included, not sure on the game though. Crossfiring 370s would probably not be worth it in the end
 
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ethan_5

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I'm not even sure my motherboard could do PCI 3.0. It has DDR3 ram so maybe i should upgrade my motherboard first.
 
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Martell1977

Martell1977

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The RAM and PCIe version have nothing to do with each other. You have to look at your motherboard specs to see if it has PCIe 3.0, and you can run any GPU in any PCIe slot version, it's all backwards compatible. (i.e. I'm running a PCIe 3.0 card in a 2.0 slot and there is no performance loss. You would see a loss until you get to 1.0 or 1.1. GPU's are just now getting to the point where they can use the bandwidth of 2.0)
 
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tallmattuk

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Firstly - if you change the processor from amd to intel, that will require a whole new motherboard which is taking you down the road of changing the computer completely. Stick with what you have and optimise the rest of the system.

you dont say what OS you're running or how much memory you have. Windows 10 is the best choice imho, especially as they're planning on bringing out a gaming mode in the future which will prioritise games over other processes.

Secondly, system memory. 2 or 4GB isnt enough. As Martell said, go on to the Crucial site, use their scanner, and upgrade to 8GB. It will make a huge difference.

If you're not using an SSD drive, you can use a 8GB+ USB drive to act as a faster page file too, using Ready Boost

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff356869.aspx

SSD drives are a good upgrade, but you would need to migrate your OS over on to it to take advantage of it, and they're not cheap. Alternatives are Hybrid drives which incorporate SSD technology alongside ordinary platter/disc format.

dont forget to take power into account and on the graphics front a GTX 1060 uses 30W less than the 480 so that might be a better choice.

do the normal things too, go into your system disk and tidy up the system files, deleting old system upgrades and the like. All that rubbish is no use to you.

It might help by telling us what games you want to play - for something like Diablo3 all this is fine, but without fast and reliable broadband you're knackered too.
 
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