What would give me the best overall performance increase?

What do you use the computer for? The 8350 is a good upgrade, but that 500 GB HDD is also a severe bottleneck factor as well. I suggest you grab this Intel 520 180 GB SSD from Intel (on sale at the moment at bestbuy.com) for 129.99 USD Free Shipping. This SSD will boost your computer boot up time/ loading time as well as applications responsiveness tremendously. Mechanical HDD like the one you are using is the biggest source of bottleneck these days. Here's the link to the Intel 520 180 GB SSD:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Intel+-+520+Series+180GB+In... 520&cp=1&lp=1

This Intel 520 180 GB got both speed and the Intel reliability in addition to the almost 30% discount off the regular price of 180 USD will go fast if you don't act quickly.

I use my computer primarily for gaming and photo editing. Not really heavy gaming, mostly MMO's and LoL.

If you are not into heavy gaming, then that Intel 520 180 GB SSD is the ideal upgrade you can get and also the biggest improvement in performance you will see. Grab it quick before its sold out.

Edit: Just to let you know, Amazon sold out within 2 hours after reducing the price from 180 USD to 129.99 USD for that same SSD to price match Best Buy. Right now Amazon is out of stock and price at Amazon for that SSD is back up to 180 dollars. Newegg is also selling at 190 USD at the moment for the same exact drive, so that 129.99 USD price at BestBuy is EXTREMELY good.

But, that SSD is a laptop ssd.

Best answer selected by Foo392.

That SSD is not made for laptop only. It can be put into a desktop as well as long as you have a 3.5'' to 2.5'' converter HDD tray.

Also, SSD doesn't just improve games loading time/saving time and OS boot time, but it improves the overall responsiveness of every thing that you use in your computer such as everytime you open up a program, everytime you open up a game or every time you launch internet explorer to browse the web etc...

With the 8350 upgrade, the most improvement you can see is about 30% faster fps in games and that is at low resolution, at high resolution like 1920-1080 or higher and AA and AF enabled, you will not gain more than 10% -15% fps since the video card becomes the bottleneck at high resolution, not the CPU. With the SSD, you will see at least 3-5 times faster in everything that you do from computer boot up/shut down/game saving/loading to programs opening/launching/files transfer etc.


WHen you use the SSD, every time you click on a program, it opens instantly and can be used right away instead of counting 1 to 10 or even 1 to 20 before you can do anything with it with traditional HDD. Photoshop is a prime example, did you ever notice how long it takes for you to be able to edit the photo from the time you click on the icon on the desktop?