Help me choose an AM3 Upgrade? Coming from a Athlon II Quad

[firefoxx04]

Hey guys, I built my cousin a desktop about 1.5-2 years ago. At the time, the Athlon II quad we choose matched up well with the GPU he planned on using. Recently he decided to buy a 6870 gpu to try and get some better in game performance. He has talked with me about upgrading his CPU to get with the current times.

here is his current setup

AMD Athlon II X4 640 Propus 3.0GHz
ASUS M4A78LT-M AM3 AMD 760G - might be a different board, cant remember.
Mushkin Enhanced Silverline 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
Corsair 750W PSU


Overclocking is not a factory right now, however it may be considered at some point (nothing super aggressive). One thing I am curious about is the board (assuming that is the board he has, Ill have to check later) is that it might not accept AM3+ cpus? It says it will handle a 125W cpu.

My main reason for wanting to upgrade his CPU is that im running a PhenomII 965 paired with a 6850 and im seeing a decent FPS jump when I jump from 3.4ghz to 3.8ghz. Making me think my GPU is bottleneck by my GPU... if thats the case, he has a even bigger bottle neck (weaker cpu and more powerful gpu)

All of that being said, he is price conscious and is currently pretty satisfied with his games. He does not need the top of the line high end stuff.. reason we went with amd. Performance to price ratio was simply better at the time.

Thanks for any help guys.

 

[lazyboy947]

current board isnt best for overclocking, and is not compatible with any am3+ cpus. Best option, fx 6300/8350, 6300 being budget, and a gigabyte 970a ud3 (8+2 power phase) for overclocking on a budget or asus m5a97 r2 (4+2) still good oc board. If staying with the am3 board a 965be or 1045t is not a bad upgrade. Would def attempt to get another 4gb ram as 8gb total is recommended for gaming

 

[firefoxx04]

current board isnt best for overclocking, and is not compatible with any am3+ cpus. Best option, fx 6300/8350, 6300 being budget, and a gigabyte 970a ud3 (8+2 power phase) for overclocking on a budget or asus m5a97 r2 (4+2) still good oc board. If staying with the am3 board a 965be or 1045t is not a bad upgrade. Would def attempt to get another 4gb ram as 8gb total is recommended for gaming

thanks. Overclocking is not something I plan on doing with his system anyways. I think the AMD 965BE would be a great choice as well, mine is fast enough.

I too dont like the 4gb idea, I may look into a second kit. It was about two years ago that we put this system together.

Thanks, just wanted to get some second opinions. Looks like newegg has the 965 for $100 flat right now and another 4gb kit would only run $30-40.

 

[twelve25]

About all you can do on AM3 is put in the fastest Phenom II X4 you can find. Anything else requires a MB Upgrade.

I disagree that more RAM would be beneficial, because games generally won't use more than 2-3GB to stay compatible with 32 bit systems. Most games are even 32 bit code.

 

[firefoxx04]

It is 64bit windows though.. I agree that its not needed but its only $33 to grab a second kit.

a 965, 6870 and 8gb should be pretty future proof for him. We are not looking to run the latest games on the highest graphics with a 120+ frame rate.

 

[twelve25]

64 bit windows, but the apps are 32 bit so they can't use more than 2GB of RAM. BF3 on 1080p ultra, 64 multiplayer uses like 1.2GB of RAM.

 

[lazyboy947]

win7 plus bf3, will strain the ram getting close to 4gb, it'll run fine with minor lagging, but for bf3 id get 8gb. my friend played bf3 on a x6 and 450gts and only 4gb of ram and with the lag i couldnt continue playing lol It was the settings or gpu as the gpu was in my other friends pc and it played smoothly with 8gb and a higher clocked x6