What would be the greater bottleneck?

[kamikazejoshua]

Budget Range: ~250$ max

System Usage from Most to Least Important:
Mostly gaming, use labtop for everything else

Parts to Upgrade:
Currently have:
-Pentium G630
-GIGABYTE GA-Z68AP-D3(R2.0)
-G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB
-XFX HD-667X-ZNFQ Radeon HD 6670 1GB
-Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache from 2006 build
-Thermaltake TR2 W0070RUC 430W ATX12V V2.2 Intel Core i7 Compliant Dual 80mm Fans Full Cable Sleevings Power Supply from 2006 build
-Acer AL1916Ab Black 19" 8ms LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 700:1 from 2006 build (1280 x 1024)

There are a few things that I would obviously like to get but right now I am solely looking at replacing either my graphics card or my CPU. I was looking at either I5-2500k or I5-3570k which are both going for cheap at Micro Center at around $160. I was also thinking of getting a Radeon 7850 for around 180$ instead. This is used mostly for gaming. High resolution isn't a huge concern right now, as you can see from my monitor. I can't get both because of money and also because I would have to replace my PSU. I am also a little concerned with putting the 7850 on there with my current PSU. With whatever money is left over, I was thinking about getting more RAM or getting another hard drive. I plan on getting another monitor down the road. Gaming on a budget when I can with 2 kids and a wife.

So basically I was wondering what would be the worse of the two bottlenecks?

Pentium G630 with Radeon 7850

or

i5-3750k or i5-2500k with current Radeon 6670

I would be interested in overclocking the CPU at some point.

Thanks

 

[lchrisk]

Pentium would not bottleneck, or little to none. The only time it would bottleneck is when playing a game like BF3 multiplayer. It requires 4 cores, which the Pentium does not have.

If you get the i5, you will also bottleneck, but not as much in 4 core games, but you would not get much performance in games that don't require 4 cores as the graphics card isn't as good.

IMO: Get the 7850. They are pretty cheap atm, and you could wait for another deal to get an i5.

P.S. They had a i5-2500k at micro center for only $100, you just barely missed it.

Since you said you have problems with your psu, and also that you don't need high resolutions, you could also get the 6670. You could game low graphics low resolution with an i5 on bf3 with decent fps.

 

[rene13cross]

I would agree. The 7850 would give you a better performance boost. Perhaps in some games you might be ever so slightly bottlenecked but IMO it won't be too severe, if there is any bottleneck at all.

 

[kamikazejoshua]

Best answer selected by kamikazejoshua.