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Ageing rig. What should I upgrade?

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  • Components
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What should I upgrade?

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October 2, 2014 4:39:27 PM

Four years ago I built my first gaming rig, which has held up very well for my needs until the last year or so. With games naturally becoming more demanding, I feel it may be time to upgrade something, but I'm not completely sure where I should be looking first.

Current specs
Motherboard: Gigabyte 880GM-D2H (incompatible with newer fx's)
Cpu: Athlon x3 450 (unlocked 4th core, now a Phenom II x4 B45)
GPU: Radeon HD 6770
Ram: 8gb G.skill

Recently I've been looking at switching to Intel and snagging an i3-4130 or saving a bit more for an i5-4340. Then I noticed how little difference processors make, in terms of gaming performance. Should I instead invest in a new graphics card, or is my CPU outdated enough that I need to upgrade that first, and get a graphics card later.

My case, hard drive, and PSU are all fine (for now) and I don't want to spend over $250 on upgrades (again, for now). I'd also like to lean towards Intel with my next build, due to wanting to tr something new.

Games I play frequently Assetto corsa, Spin tires, Skyrim, Kerbal, Arma3/Dayz, Far cry 3

Thank you for your help in advance.

More about : ageing rig upgrade

a b 4 Gaming
October 2, 2014 5:13:28 PM

get the i5 4440 and a h87 board later you can upgrade your GPU now if you upgrade the GPU you may get bottlenecked by the processor.
October 2, 2014 5:56:41 PM

prit87 said:
get the i5 4440 and a h87 board later you can upgrade your GPU now if you upgrade the GPU you may get bottlenecked by the processor.


Out of curiosity, why the h87 board over h81? I'm an amd veteran new to intel so I'm unsure of the differences.
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a b 4 Gaming
October 3, 2014 12:22:48 AM

H87 basically the same as Z87 minus the overclocking abilities, and doesn't support triple SLI
H81 budget level, no overclocking, no sli, limited sata 6gb/s, limited usb 3.0 and fan headers also some lacks in usb 3.0 headers.
October 3, 2014 5:00:02 PM

prit87 said:
H87 basically the same as Z87 minus the overclocking abilities, and doesn't support triple SLI
H81 budget level, no overclocking, no sli, limited sata 6gb/s, limited usb 3.0 and fan headers also some lacks in usb 3.0 headers.


Alright, thanks for your help. Looks like I'll be picking up an i5 and a h87 motherboard.
!