G3430 Pentium + New Motherboard or Phenom II X4 980 Upgrade?

[anthonyla65]

Hi everyone, I have about £120 to upgrade my PC which is currently running an Athlon II X2 250 and HD5670. Currently when I play Planetside 2, it shows that my CPU is bottlenecking the framerates so I plan to upgrade the CPU first, then the GPU along with a new monitor as I'm currently running a 1366x768 18.5" Monitor.

Would it be better to get a S1150 Mobo + Pentium G3430 3.3GHz or the Phenom II X4 980 3.7GHz? I have looked at reviews on the G2020 which performed fairly close to a Phenom II X4 965, With the G3430 being a Haswell chip and higher clock speed than the G2020 this would surely be roughly the same as the 980?

My plan would be to eventually upgrade to the i5 4670K when the price drops in a couple of years hence the choice of getting a S1150 Mobo. The alternative path would be to stick with this motherboard and get the Phenom II X4 980 and a new motherboard + next gen AMD CPU in a couple of years. Is the Haswell G3430 3.3GHz Dual Core as fast as the Phenom II X4 980? Both paths are about the same price, although I'd be getting a used X4 980 as I believe they are no longer produced and I need a new HSF as my current Athlon Stock fan wouldn't be up to the job. An advantage of this is that I wouldn't have to reinstall the OS. Another CPU I'm considering for similar prices is the Phenom II X6 1100 3.3GHz Hex Core, how would that compare?
I'd be keeping this CPU upgrade for atleast another 3 years, because if it works why mend it. The Athlon II X2 250 has lasted me 3 years and now has become dog slow hence the upgrade.

What do you guys think?

Thanks,
Anthony

 

[ryan27968]

intel has a much more solid architecture, meaning that realistically, even if it has a lower clock speed and amount of cores, it will still have better perforrmance, and is much more upgradeable.get the pentium+mobo