Upgrading my Motherboard and/or GPU.

DocVoc · Jan 28, 2017

As of right now my specs are:
960GM-VGS3 FX w/ V1.40 Bios
AMD FX 8300 w/ Water-cooling System (not sure of the brand atm)
8GB DDR3 RAM
R9 270X OC 2GB
I'm trying to figure out what exactly I should update on my pc as far as mobo or gpu.
From the info Ive seen my GPU is bottlenecking my CPU by 27%, I've seen that a 1050 Ti would eliminate most, if not all of the bottlenecking. Also from what Ive read on forums my mobo is pretty much sh!t and not even worth overclocking on. Which brings me here, Should I get The 1050 Ti to replace my 270X or should I replace the motherboard with an ASUS TUF SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0?

n0ns3ns3 · Jan 28, 2017

1050Ti is bad value for money in most of the world.
RX 470 4GB would be much better buy.
There is no point in upgrading your MB or CPU alone. You should upgrade both CPU and GPU to either intel core i5/i7 or the next gen ryzen from AMD .

DocVoc · Jan 28, 2017

n0ns3ns3 :

Thanks for the speedy reply, I'm going to purchase that card it seems legit even the RX 460 seems decent. Im also thinkin about sticking with this CPU a bit longer since in can reportedly be OC'd to 4.4-4.6Ghz. Also found a deal for the mobo mentioned above that comes with 2x4 8gbs of ram that match my two sticks for a 120 bucks, seems like a deal right?
Also would you know due to the Bios update for my current mobo that it could overclcock my 8300?

n0ns3ns3 · Jan 29, 2017

your current MB is not made for overclocking. It will fail to deliver enough power to overclocked CPU due to very simple VRM design.
Personally, I'd not invest even 1$ into current CPU/MB (including MB upgrade). Just wait until you can upgrade CPU + MB + RAM all together.
Your current GPU and even 1050Ti will be fine with FX 8300 even on stock speeds.

breek · Jan 29, 2017

Hey Doc. I would like to chime in from personal experience. What I would recommend would depend on your budget, time line and performance goals. As Nonsense already said, don't throw money into the AM3+ socket or into the FX series. Neither make sense right now.

I'll outline a few situations that would determine what I would recommend to you:

1) ASAP: If you can't wait, I would recommend an i5 6400, 1x8GB of DDR4 RAM and a B or H110 motherboard. If you want to spend a little more money, get more performance and overclock a little, I would recommend an i5 6400, 2x8GB of DDR4 RAM and a Z170 motherboard in this list so you may flash an overclocking BIOS: http://overclocking.guide/intel-skylake-non-k-overclocking-bios-list/ (I can recommend the Gigabyte Z170X G1 Gaming 3).
The flashed BIOS allows for non-k overclocking of Skylake CPUs (excluding Xeons; only ASRock's E3V5 Fatal1ty C232 will overclock a Xeon at the moment). We can go more into that if you choose that route.

2) Patient Lad: If you're happy to wait, I would look at waiting until AMD Ryzen comes to. See what prices and performance are like and if Intel responds with more of their own products to compete with AMD (Skylake prices should drop if Ryzen is comparable).

As far as your GPU goes, it is on the weaker side but your CPU is going to bottleneck you in almost any game you play that is not specifically GPU bound, and I can't think of many past Tomb Raider, Crysis or CoD (all of these games will see significant improvement in minimum and average FPS, if not maximums as well, if you upgrade your CPU).

All of this information comes from the owner of an FX 4300 + GTX 660 who upgraded to a GTX 770 and saw barely any improvement. I then upgraded to an FX 8320 which still has such poor single core performance that I, once again, saw barely any improvement. When I upgraded to my i5 6400 (before overclocking), games like LoL, WoW, GTA V all have substantially higher frame rates. It removed all of the FPS drops I had to deal with. I am very happy with my upgrade, though in CAD ($) it came to over $500 for the CPU, Mobo, and RAM.

EDIT: Another note to add is the improvement in the Valley benchmark score. Almost a 10% increase (~3120 to ~3360; I'm at work so I don't have exact numbers) just because I upgraded my CPU, and this is a GPU bound benchmark. It let's my 770 show more of itself now. I know that is a synthetic benchmark blah blah, but the point still stands that even in GPU bound instances, your CPU still has to have enough oomf to help get it off the ground.

DocVoc · Feb 23, 2017

breek :

Hey Doc. I would like to chime in from personal experience. What I would recommend would depend on your budget, time line and performance goals. As Nonsense already said, don't throw money into the AM3+ socket or into the FX series. Neither make sense right now.

I'll outline a few situations that would determine what I would recommend to you:

1) ASAP: If you can't wait, I would recommend an i5 6400, 1x8GB of DDR4 RAM and a B or H110 motherboard. If you want to spend a little more money, get more performance and overclock a little, I would recommend an i5 6400, 2x8GB of DDR4 RAM and a Z170 motherboard in this list so you may flash an overclocking BIOS: http://overclocking.guide/intel-skylake-non-k-overclocking-bios-list/ (I can recommend the Gigabyte Z170X G1 Gaming 3).
The flashed BIOS allows for non-k overclocking of Skylake CPUs (excluding Xeons; only ASRock's E3V5 Fatal1ty C232 will overclock a Xeon at the moment). We can go more into that if you choose that route.

2) Patient Lad: If you're happy to wait, I would look at waiting until AMD Ryzen comes to. See what prices and performance are like and if Intel responds with more of their own products to compete with AMD (Skylake prices should drop if Ryzen is comparable).

As far as your GPU goes, it is on the weaker side but your CPU is going to bottleneck you in almost any game you play that is not specifically GPU bound, and I can't think of many past Tomb Raider, Crysis or CoD (all of these games will see significant improvement in minimum and average FPS, if not maximums as well, if you upgrade your CPU).

All of this information comes from the owner of an FX 4300 + GTX 660 who upgraded to a GTX 770 and saw barely any improvement. I then upgraded to an FX 8320 which still has such poor single core performance that I, once again, saw barely any improvement. When I upgraded to my i5 6400 (before overclocking), games like LoL, WoW, GTA V all have substantially higher frame rates. It removed all of the FPS drops I had to deal with. I am very happy with my upgrade, though in CAD ($) it came to over $500 for the CPU, Mobo, and RAM.

EDIT: Another note to add is the improvement in the Valley benchmark score. Almost a 10% increase (~3120 to ~3360; I'm at work so I don't have exact numbers) just because I upgraded my CPU, and this is a GPU bound benchmark. It let's my 770 show more of itself now. I know that is a synthetic benchmark blah blah, but the point still stands that even in GPU bound instances, your CPU still has to have enough oomf to help get it off the ground.

Thanks for the long response, Im just now getting around to upgrading my PC. I ran across a gigabyte 960 4gb I figured I could use the upgrade then just pair it with the Ryzen 1700X when i get the cash for it. Now I install the 960 remove all the driver from my previous R9 270X and Im noticing heavy lag spike periodically in CS:GO (all the way to 25-35 fps!) and audio issues after playing for a while in Paladins.
The only thing I can think is that my 500W EVGA PSU is no supplying enough power to it if that would do anything that is.
Any ideas?

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Upgrading my Motherboard and/or GPU.

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