R7 200 series upgrade

albertopierluissi · Jan 18, 2018

Looking to update my R7 200 series, as well as possibly my cpu if absolutely needed, I wanted to be able to run games like WoW with no issues, Pubg, etc. currently I get very low framerate for each of these games. I'm a newbiedoobie when it comes to upgrading. Any assist would help me out here, anything in the 100-200 range as thats my budget currently. Any other upgrades that can be pointed out for other components (if you have the time) would be great!

EDIT** On a side note, my computer restarts on its own for what seems like no reason, i've tried to check for virus or really any malicious things and havent found any but I don't know why it keeps on restarting This is why im thinking about upgrading, I cant find (or they no longer support) drivers for the r7 200 series as its showing mine are out of date and the site doesnt give me anything.

CPU
AMD FX-4300
Vishera 32nm Technology
RAM
8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 801MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. GA-78LMT-S2 (Socket M2)
Graphics
VE247 (1920x1080@60Hz)
ASUS VS228 (1080x1920@60Hz)
2048MB ATI AMD Radeon R7 200 Series (XFX Pine Group)
Storage
931GB TOSHIBA DT01ACA100 ATA Device (SATA)
7GB SanDisk Cruzer USB Device (USB)
60GB PNY USB 2.0 FD USB Device (USB)

clutchc · Jan 18, 2018

Here is the CPU support page for the GA-78LMT-S2 (rev. 1.0). If yours is a different rev. number click on the appropriate link at the top of the page. The FX 83xx is probably the best you can do for that 95W board.

The gfx card upgrade will depend on the power supply specs listed on its nameplate. Check it out or tell us the make/model of the PSU. But if it a OEM PSU in a pre-built PC, you're probably looking at a GTX 1050 Ti as the best card.

The bad news is that now is a horrible time to buy a new gfx card. The miners have the gfx card prices jacked up again.

geofelt · Jan 18, 2018

Your FX cores are slow.
Run this test to see if you could benefit from a stronger graphics card:

Run YOUR games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
If your FPS stays the same, you are likely more cpu limited.

tristerin · Jan 18, 2018

CPU is going to bottleneck, and in that price range your R7 may as well just stay in the case. I just built a new Ryzen machine (Ryzen 7 1700) and due to GPU prices I just stuck my old R7 260X card in and I am running Ultra on Fortnite, BF4 with zero lag and high frames (without dips, only lag I get is network)

In your price range, the best you could hope for us a sub 20% increase in performance from a GPU (depending on which 2XX series you have - the R7 260X is only 17% slower than the much newer RX 560 but for a 17% gain, it isn't even close to worth the money)

And (my opinion) purchasing a GTX 1050 Ti for the current pricing would be outrageous (but you may find one under 200 atm, newegg has 1 under 200 as of right now). My 2 cents.

albertopierluissi · Jan 27, 2018

clutchc :

EDIT** On a side note, my computer restarts on its own for what seems like no reason, i've tried to check for virus or really any malicious things and havent found any but I don't know why it keeps on restarting This is why im thinking about upgrading, I cant find (or they no longer support) drivers for the r7 200 series as its showing mine are out of date and the site doesnt give me anything any ideas here?

tristerin · Jan 27, 2018

I use the AMD auto driver program with ReLive, and my rig with the R7 is using 17.12.2 drivers 18.1.1 are out but I haven't DL'd them yet

clutchc · Jan 27, 2018

albertopierluissi :

That's more than a side note, lol. Start by doing a few basic housecleaning tasks. Disable/remove as mouch junk as you can that starts with Win. Look in the tray for stuff that is running that you can live w/o or at least run on an as-need basis only.
Next do a Win disk cleanup. If you're not running W10, it should be similar for W7.
Next run CCleaner and do the Clean and Registry portions both to get rid of most registry errors, resource-wasting crap, software conflicts, etc.

What is the make and model of your PSU?

albertopierluissi · Jan 29, 2018

turbolink atx-xg 500w

clutchc · Jan 29, 2018

albertopierluissi :

Ah! That may be the problem. I presume this is it?
It isn't a very good PSU.

albertopierluissi · Jan 29, 2018

Yes this is definitely the same one, what should I swap that to? I mean tbh i've had my pc for about 2-3 years now. But yeah.

clutchc · Jan 29, 2018

albertopierluissi :

Well, understand... this is only an educated guess from afar. But restarts and shutdowns are often caused by a faulty, poor quality, or worn out PSU. Or by an over-loaded PSU. In your case, I doubt it is over-loaded. Did you ever buy the new GTX 1050 Ti? If so, which one. Which GPU you are using (or plan on using) will be the determining factor.

albertopierluissi · Feb 2, 2018

honestly for right now im stuck with my current set up, as the gfx cards are so overpriced its sort of ridiculous.

I'm at a loss i mean of course, upgrading pc in general is still new to me. Where would you start? quality ofc is great but prices are big factor too. I honestly dont care too much about getting my graphics in ULTRA for every single game, med/high i'd be ok with if even that much.

clutchc · Feb 2, 2018

albertopierluissi :

If you've done the software troubleshooting tasks I outlined above and still have restarts, then I would consider the PSU next.
Did you ever mention which R7-200 series card you were using now? 240, 250, 250X, 260X?

Your only hope with the AM3+ platform you have now are the choices for CPU upgrades I mentioned above. The FX-83xx being the best.

geofelt · Feb 2, 2018

Upgrade to FX-83xx is not advised.
The motherboard is poor and is not recommended for FX-6 or FX-8
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2384030/motherboard-tier-list-am3-chipsets.html

Past that, single thread performance is not much better with passmark numbers in the 1400 range which is what you already have.
FX-6 and FX-8 just give you 6 0r 8 threads which is not likely what you need.

$200 spent on a G4600 processor gives you a single thread passmark number of 2057.
A lga1151 motherboard and 8gb of ddr4 ram.
The included HD630 graphics will be stronger than a R7-240
You can go up from there.

clutchc · Feb 3, 2018

geofelt :

Doesn't that thread imply overclocking? Stock, the 8350 should be OK. I ran one for over a year on the old 760 chipset before I sold the machine. It's still running to the best of my knowledge.

albertopierluissi · Feb 3, 2018

clutchc :

albertopierluissi :

If you've done the software troubleshooting tasks I outlined above and still have restarts, then I would consider the PSU next.
Did you ever mention which R7-200 series card you were using now? 240, 250, 250X, 260X?

Your only hope with the AM3+ platform you have now are the choices for CPU upgrades I mentioned above. The FX-83xx being the best.

Yes, its definitely the 240. I'm looking to start up here slow as le funds are coming the same way as i want to upgrade. so yeah.

jr9 · Feb 4, 2018

I would start over on a new platform like Ryzen. The very suggestion of upgrading to the FX platform in 2018 makes my skin crawl. Save up some money and get Ryzen and a graphics card like the 1050 or 1060 or Radeon equivalent.

- FX chips run hot, are completely inferior to i5 processors from 5 years ago in terms of performance, and use stupid amounts of electricity

- Those FX era AM3+ motherboards terrible. Low quality VRMs make overclocking difficult. Frequently suffer from electrical issues and failure. If you try overclocking on that board things will go bad. Fast.

- Radeon 200 series is the most problematic graphics card series there is. I've seen more failed or failing 200 series cards as a technician than all nVIDIA 900 and 1000 series combined. Our shop had 8 dead 200 series cards in our collection (3 of them might still work with new fans) Do not upgrade to a higher level 200 series card. They are also popular with miners so they are expensive.

Techron · Feb 4, 2018

Since you seem to Not Yet have the funds for all the upgrades, I would suggest simply waiting and saving.

And since you don't really care for ULTRA settings, you can build a pretty modest Rig by saving for a few months. In say 3-4 months there will be B360 motherboards from Intel, new Ryzen processors from AMD and possibly new GPUs form Nvidia. So save up and buy a Well Balanced rig then. For example:

Intel i3 8100 with a Decent B360 Motherboard
Or
Ryzen 5 1400 with a B350 Motherboard
8 GB RAM ( 16 GB if you can afford it otherwise just upgrade down the line)
GTX 1050 or equivalent newer generation GPU
A New 400-500W Power Supply from a reputed brand like Corsair, EVGA, Antec or Seasonic etc.

As clutchc said your current Power Supply may be causing your problems. So you should work on solving that start and shutdown problem. It may be due to any problem with your OS too. So you may need to do a fresh installation.

I would suggest making a rough Budget of how much Money you can gather by saving for around the next 4 months that you can spend on your PC. Then in accordance to that Budget you will be able to decide what you want to replace or upgrade.

albertopierluissi · Feb 13, 2018

ok so as far as what i have right now, what power supply can i get to swap that out, cuz these cards are outrageous can I switch this power supply simply with any other brand without being an issue. Should I preemptively get something with a bit more power just in case i decide to upgrade in the near future?

jr9 · Feb 13, 2018

Your PC doesn't care about which PSU brand you use; it only cares if the PSU has enough wattage and is reliable. Choose your next graphics card first before deciding on your next PSU as your choice of graphics card will determine how much wattage you need.

Again, even if you get a decent graphics card and a new PSU that will support it, you will still have poor overall performance with that CPU. You will have increased framerates with the new card but will have frequent framerate drops as the CPU will not be able to keep up with the graphics card.

clutchc · Feb 13, 2018

albertopierluissi :

No matter if you keep the platform you have now and just upgrade the CPU/GPU, or if you move to a new platform... this PSU is good quality, inexpensive and will handle just about any gfx card you can probably afford.
SeaSonic S12II 620

Should be a simple swap with your old one.

albertopierluissi · Mar 27, 2018

Hey guys, I've change out my power supply and I was still getting my restarts every so often, sometimes its if I try to watch several vids at the same time. Other times the computer just reboots if its idle or im surfing the web. I did a reinstall of the OS as well. Anyone have any advice for me here at what could be causing this? I run cc cleaner, there's some browser plugins on chrome that I cant disable as well not sure if that has something to do with it. I try using ccleaner and i get an error saying "some of the selected items cannot be changed as they are protected by the browser" Which sucks. not sure if they are related at all.

clutchc · Mar 27, 2018

Did you get the Seasonic I listed above?

I have used CCleaner for... well, seems like forever. Never a hitch. And never saw that error message. (of course, I don't use Chrome) Have you tried shutting down the browser before running ccleaner? Post a screenshot of CCleaner's application tab.

albertopierluissi · Mar 28, 2018

clutchc :

Yep, purchased the same exact one, shortly after I reinstalled my OS heres the app tab, and yes I definitely made sure chrome was closed, nothing chrome related running on TM

Image for app tab, as well as the error when I try to delete or disable any apps on chrome.
ErrorIMG

clutchc · Mar 28, 2018

albertopierluissi :

I've never seen that screen in CCleaner in all the years I've used it. But it probably should be normal.
As to the restarts, it's been awhile since you posted. Please list your system once more.

R7 200 series upgrade

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