Upgrading AMD fx-8120

[aroton]

Hey, I am looking to upgrade my fx-8120. I have been playing wildstar since it came out, and it seems that the processor is the major bottleneck for the game. My GPU is a 7870 and usually runs at under 50% load. FPS does not change on any of the graphical settings. So, it seems to me that the processor is the major bottleneck.

My question is: Is it worth buying a whole new motherboard and making the jump to the Devil's canyon i7, or should I just buy up the fx 8350 on the cheap and hope AMD releases new FX chips in 2015 for the AM3.

Here are my concerns, if I swapped over to an all intel ecosystem, is the socket type expected to switch soon (1-2 years)? Is the performance difference between the two worth having to replace my motherboard?

 

[Alpha3031]

Definitely worth going intel, not sure about i7 though, i5 is usually best value for games.

 

[JOOK-D]

Hey, I am looking to upgrade my fx-8120. I have been playing wildstar since it came out, and it seems that the processor is the major bottleneck for the game. My GPU is a 7870 and usually runs at under 50% load. FPS does not change on any of the graphical settings. So, it seems to me that the processor is the major bottleneck.

Yes, that's almost certainly the bottleneck. You could try overclocking, if you have a decent CPU cooler and motherboard (speaking of which what is the model?). Wildstar likely doesn't make use of more than 4 cores - intel's 4 core i5's have stronger cores, and therefore will perform better.

My question is: Is it worth buying a whole new motherboard and making the jump to the Devil's canyon i7, or should I just buy up the fx 8350 on the cheap and hope AMD releases new FX chips in 2015 for the AM3.

Depending on your motherboard model. If you have a decent AM3+ motherboard then it might be worth jumping to piledriver (x3xx) and overclocking, but generally I'd say it's time to switch over to intel. What would be your budget for a new CPU and motherboard?

Here are my concerns, if I swapped over to an all intel ecosystem, is the socket type expected to switch soon (1-2 years)? Is the performance difference between the two worth having to replace my motherboard?

The socket is expected to switch to Skylake either late next year or early the year after, so 2015-2016. The differences between generations in recent intel microarchitectures are minimal though. For example, an overclocked Sandy Bridge i5 2500k will happily keep up with a newer Haswell i5 4670k. The performance increases in percentages have been in the single digits, so a small overclock balances that. If you grab a Z97 motherboard now (if you're looking to overclock that is, otherwise you'd be fine with H97) you'll be set for Broadwell, releasing early 2015 should you want to upgrade then (I doubt it, but anyway).

Whether the performance difference is worth it is up to you. Personally, below 60FPS in games is unacceptable so I had to make the switch.

 

[aroton]

Hmm, k.

My mobo is a gigabyte: GA-970A-UD3

Probably nothing special considering that I bought it and the 8120 when it came out for like 200 dollars on bundle.

I have tried OC'n the CPU to minimal FPS increase, and wild instability.

Budget isn't really much of an issue, ~300 for a cpu and ~200 for a motherboard. I will still probably grab an i7 due to the fact that I usually have lots of things running on my computer.

Thanks for the answers, i'll probably just wait until the devil's canyons chips are available and grab one of those.

 

[Alpha3031]

Hmm, k.

My mobo is a gigabyte: GA-970A-UD3

Probably nothing special considering that I bought it and the 8120 when it came out for like 200 dollars on bundle.

I have tried OC'n the CPU to minimal FPS increase, and wild instability.

Budget isn't really much of an issue, ~300 for a cpu and ~200 for a motherboard. I will still probably grab an i7 due to the fact that I usually have lots of things running on my computer.

Thanks for the answers, i'll probably just wait until the devil's canyons chips are available and grab one of those.

They already are! and that i7 is clocked 4 GHz out of the box

 

[aroton]

If you know somewhere its available already, please send me a link

Everywhere I go it says the 25th

 

[Alpha3031]

If you know somewhere its available already, please send me a link

Everywhere I go it says the 25th

For pre order I mean. Yeah, they're only going to start shipping the 25th, but I guess you already knew that.