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Need a system refresh for gaming, can I reuse my video card and should I go with Intel or AMD?

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  • upgrade refresh
  • Systems
Last response: in Systems
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July 14, 2014 5:41:17 PM

Built my system 5 years ago, it's a 1st Gen Phenom X4 @ 2Ghz with a HD 5770 and 8GB ram.

Trying to play games(Sleeping Dogs, Witcher 2, Assassins Creed 3) and I think my CPU is the bottleneck, most games only load 2 cores and I get about mid 20FPS range.

Ran OpenHardwareMonitor and get about 60% CPU usage and about 40-70% GPU usage on the chart depending on the game. Figure the CPU is only about half used because the games are only using two cores and the other two are idle.

Considering the 760K or a Pentium G3258.

Would my HD 5770 be good enough for either of these CPUs
or will I need to replace it to see much benefit of a new CPU? I think the HD 5770 has more potential than I'm getting from it. Games run equally slow if I set the graphics options low or high suggesting to me it's a CPU bottleneck.

I like the lower power requirement of the Pentium and fast game performance but going from 4 to 2 cores feels like a step backwards.

Want to spend as little as possible and plan to reuse everything in my old system. Will only need a motherboard/cpu and possibly memory.

I have 8GB of PC3-10600 ECC. It came from a server. Will that work in either an Intel Z87 or a AMD X88 desktop board? I think it's slower than the normal gaming ram I've seen on the egg, will the slower speed impact performance much? I also have access to a large amount of buffered DDR3 but don't think that will work in desktop boards.

Should I just hold off another year and wait for better stuff that's around the corner? Other than bad gaming with newer games I'm happy with my system.

Thanks for any feedback or recommendations.

More about : system refresh gaming reuse video card intel amd

July 14, 2014 6:40:42 PM

Whats your upgrade price range. Also do you live near microcenter.
July 17, 2014 4:54:16 AM

I purchased the cheapest 1150 board I could find, MSI H81M-P33, an i3-4150, and 8GB of DDR3. Everything else I reused from my old system which was a 780G based motherboard and a Phenom 9350e. Went with the i3 instead of the Pentium because I wasn't sure if I could overclock it without a Z series board. The price difference between a H81 and a Z87/Z97 is about 60 dollars and for $60 I could just buy a higher performing i3 and not have to hope I got a good G3258.

Sleeping Dogs went from 23fps on low to 60 on medium and 30 on high. Witcher 2 went from 23 on low to 35 on medium. Looking at the hardware monitor the GPU is now pegged and the CPU varies between 40% and 80% used depending on the game.

The HD 5770 is now the weak link in the system but it's living up to its full potential with the i3. Gaming is smooth and enjoyable and I can wait another year or two before replacing it. It was frustating to have the game set to 'low' and and still get a choppy display.

The other good thing and the reason I went with Intel this time instead of AMD is power usage. The Killowatt meter showed 150w idle load and a 220w load gaming with the old system. The new i3 system uses 85w idle and 150 gaming. I have 4 sata drives attached. My un-airconditioned room can get very hot in the summer with the computer running, the lower draw should help.
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