New Graphics Card or CPU/MoBO instead?

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benjamin_morris

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Jun 23, 2017
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I'm currently gaming (mostly Blizzard titles - Overwatch, StarCraft II, HotS) with an ancient system I built years ago. Current setup below:

AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4ghz
8gb DDR3 RAM
AMD Radeon HD 6700 1gb

So yeah... not great.

My question is whether it'd be better to spend $500 on a GTX 1080, or if a new CPU/MoBo (i7700 Kaby Lake) would yield better performance with my current graphics card? I'm leaning toward CPU/MoBo, but figured I'd put it out there.
 
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raisonjohn


If you are willing to spend ~$500 at a time, you can already upgrade your CPU/MB/RAM and GPU all at once and get the better FPS you want (which you cannot achieve by just upgrading either at a time).

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Pentium G4560 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($69.89 @ B&H)
Motherboard: ASRock - B250M-HDV Micro ATX LGA1151...
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Supahos

Supahos

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Nov 11, 2013
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A 1080 in your build would be a complete turd. At least if you do the CPU+board+Memory it'll be faster at some tasks. Just dropping a giant GPU into that build would annoy you to see it running at 22% and 30 fps in some cases because your cpu is holding it back.

My actual Suggestion is save up more, keep what you have and do a complete rebuild later. Dropping a 7700 or a 1080 with the rest of that Computer will be very unbalanced
 
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benjamin_morris

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Jun 23, 2017
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I completely understand that upgrading either/or will result in a very unbalanced system. I fully intend to upgrade my whole system over time, probably $500 at a time. So for my first $500, the bottom line is would I get better FPS right now with a new GPU or a new CPU/MoBo? Thanks for your feedback! =)
 
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raisonjohn

raisonjohn

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Feb 22, 2015
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If you are willing to spend ~$500 at a time, you can already upgrade your CPU/MB/RAM and GPU all at once and get the better FPS you want (which you cannot achieve by just upgrading either at a time).

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Pentium G4560 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($69.89 @ B&H)
Motherboard: ASRock - B250M-HDV Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($62.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($105.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: PNY - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB Video Card ($279.99 @ Dell Small Business)
Total: $518.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-06-23 02:28 EDT-0400

The above-suggested build will allow you the opportunity to upgrade to the i7-7700 in the future. Getting the Pentium G4560 as a start-up CPU, will see an increase of ~30% in effective speed compared to your current Phenom II X4 965 (http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Pentium-G4560-vs-AMD-Phenom-II-X4-965/3892vs606). A 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 RAM is already included. The GTX 1060 6GB is a top-of-the-line GPU for 1080p/60Hz gaming, which is more than 7x faster than your current Radeon HD 6700 (http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1060-6GB-vs-AMD-Radeon-HD-6700/3639vsm9272).
 
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benjamin_morris

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Jun 23, 2017
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510


Thanks so much for your input. That sounds like a good plan. I'll look into that!
 
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