Upgrading past an older AMD FX based system

vipe155

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Sep 15, 2014
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I'm looking for some insight on an upgrade path for my current desktop system, which is starting to have some trouble keeping up in some newer game releases. I don't do any real video work, only a little Photoshop, and so really games (at 1080p) are what I want the performance for.

I have:
AMD FX 4170
GTX 670
8gb DDR3

I've always bought AMD for processors, but performance on AMDs side of things has constantly dropped off, and with nothing new coming until later this year I'm ok with finally moving over to an Intel based system.

I don't really have the budget to go for a 900 series graphics card and new processor/mobo/RAM but am open to either one atm. I was looking at the Skylake processors, with a Z170 and some OC DDR4. Obviously that would get me onto something with an actual upgrade path in the future and off the dead AMD FX line. My concern is what kind of increase in performance I would actually get.

I have a younger sibling that put together his first gaming system (on a budget), and used a i3 6100, 8gb RAM and a GTX 760. In comparing some numbers, that system beats mine in the synthetic 3DMark stuff, but was either dead even or slightly behind my system in some games/game benchmarks from the past 1-3 years. I know the 760 gets beat out by a few frames in some games against the 670, but I read that i3s are better than even the 6 core to 8 core AMDs, you'll get better performance in games with i3s, i5s, etc. I was expecting his system would at least consistently be above mine in most games, but that isn't the case as his new i3 and DDR4 don't push his numbers above my old stuff.

Is it worth buying a whole new Mobo and memory + Intel processor, or would I just be better off putting the money into another graphics card upgrade and waiting on the other components? I was actually considering an i3 based on what I'd heard before or maybe stretching to an i5. I don't want a lateral move performance wise in games. Will I truly see any better numbers going to a new i3 or i5 in games like Fallout 4? Thanks!
 

logainofhades

Titan
Moderator
Since you already have DDR3, you could just go with a Haswell based i5, and an H97 board instead. Yes, the upgrade path isn't much, but neither is Skylake vs Haswell performance. You could also go with a 1231v3, with H97, for i7 performance.
 

AreH

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Well vipe155

in the case of i5 yes you will notice a way better performance but in the case of i3 I don't think this is good way to go, despite all those stories about intel supremacy. One of the possibilities is to upgrade to fx 6300 and better gpu. This would be decent pc for some time.

Best luck!
 

vipe155

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Sep 15, 2014
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Thanks for the information. It's a little difficult getting real numbers in games that really tell a detailed story about how much performance I would get going to Intel. I've seen a lot of posts saying "i3 is as good as higher priced FXs" and "i5s and 7s are way better" because of single core performance, but I'm worried about that being true. What kind of framerate difference would I see going with an i5 and the same GPU right now?

Also, Haswell would be ok enough with me, but it's not like the prices are much different than Skylake. I assume that higher frequency DDR3/4 really doesn't matter much either, as I'm on some older DDR3 now.