Need advice on what to upgrade (CPU or Graphics Card)

[okhamky]

Hi all,

I was wondering what the biggest bottleneck in my system was, my CPU or my Graphics card. I already switched to an SSD and have 12 gigs of ram.

CPU: AMD Athlon II X3 440 Rana 3.0 Ghz
Graphics Card: Radeon HD5770 512MB

I'm an avid gamer and would like to up the settings on some of the games I play (SC2, for example, I can only really run at medium in big 4v4 games)

My motherboard is socket AM3, and in my research it didn't seem like there was a significant upgrade at CPU that didn't require me to get a new motherboard. So really this is new CPU&Motherboard vs new Graphics Card.

What do you guys think?

Thanks so much for the help!

 

[neo_classical]

Hey,
How much do you have to spend?
I would suggest your Graphics Card is the thing you need to upgrade. What's your power supply so we know how much you have to play with.

 

[Brett928S2]

Both to be honest, but gpu first...

All the best Brett

 

[okhamky]

I have around 100-200 to spend. Willing to spend a bit more if that gets me over the "hump" to a good price/performance level.

Have a brand new 750 watt power supply, that shouldn't be much of an issue.

Thanks for the opinions so far!

 

[plova25]

If you are going with a graphics card then make sure to consider all of the following:
GB
core clock
stream processors.

My son plays Skyrim on his computer in "high" setting with no problem and has the following set up:

AMD Phenom II x6 @ 2.6 GHz
Radeon 5750, 1GB, 700 MHz core clock, 720 stream processors.

For your price range you can get a good graphics card better than listed above.