Upgrade recommendation of CPU or Motherboard? Which of the other will make a bigger difference?

ajgarcia1428 · Dec 5, 2017

Hello, all. I would like to know some recommendations on a system I have just for watching movies and playing games. Definitely the CPU or motherboard must be replaced but would like some information on how one or other will affect the performance. This question is for an assignment in school, so some of the answers will be shown in a presentation. Currently the system I am speaking of reads the following specs:

EVGA Supernova 650 80+Platinum
Corsair Force Series 360GB and Blue Western Digital 1TB both with roughly 60% space left
Biostar TA970 Ver 5.3
AMD FX-4350
32GB Corsair Vengeance Pro
EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti through a Dell 60Hz monitor

Thanks for future recommendations !

jgustin7b · Dec 6, 2017

A motherboard upgrade wouldn’t do much, as it will only upgrade compatibility, such as usb 3.1 ports and it might give it a tiny speed boost for newer models, but the CPU is the one of the most critical parts of the system. It is involved in many processes of your Pc. Upgrading that (and making sure you have the same socket cpu as the mobo) will result in a major speed boost. Sure the mobo may have overclocking abilities, but does your cpu? Both the cpu and mobo must have Oc abilities to overclock. Also, A weak cpu will bottleneck, or limit the capability, of a strong gpu. And seeing to it you have 32 gb of ram, a stronger cpu will help in multitasking as it, let’s say an Intel Core i5, has more cores than a weaker one, say, an Intel Pentium.

Zerk2012 · Dec 6, 2017

In your case a processor upgrade will show the best performance gain. The GTX 1050ti is a decent gaming card for 1080p monitors. If your processor can not sent the information to it fast enough then it has nothing to do.
To upgrade to the most modern processor you will need the CPU, motherboard, and new DDR4 memory.
If you can find a good deal on a used i5 or i7 4XXX processor and board then you could reuse your memory.
Here are some benchmarks for gaming. You will need to look at some of the older games to see your processor.
https://www.techspot.com/features/gaming-benchmarks/
Here is a decent site to compare both video cards and processors.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-8600K-vs-AMD-FX-4350/3941vs2880
https://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/62

The Paladin · Dec 6, 2017

Your motherboard according to : http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-Biostar/TA970_5.3.html can support up to 140WTDP

Meaning you could upgrade your FX-4350 series cpu to a FX-8370, When comparing the specs of both you clearly see double the number of cores, double L1, L2 cpu cache. which will play a lot on performance.

The 4350 is 4 cores, 4.3 GHz L1 Cache: 128 KB (code) 64 KB (data) L2 Cache: 4 MB L3 Cache: 8 MB Thermal Design Power:125 Watt
The 8370 is 8 cores, 4.3 GHz L1 Cache: 256 KB (code) 128 KB (data) L2 Cache: 8 MB L3 Cache: 8 MB Thermal Design Power: 125 Watt

Your could get a used GTX 970/980TI or a new 1060 3gb/6gb or 1070/TI for gaming, the increase of FPS over the 1050 ti, should be substantial. making your gaming experience, comparing PassMark scores you can see below how the video cards rate.

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Upgrade recommendation of CPU or Motherboard? Which of the other will make a bigger difference?

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