Suggested Upgrades on an AMD AM3+ build

weallhavedreams

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Thought I would ask here as you people seem the most knowledgeable...

My friend has a fairly old 'budget-gaming' AMD build and over the weekend was complaining about not being completely happy with his system and asked for suggestions on improving it (typically he didnt mention anything specific) but he did say that he feels like it 'needs' an upgrade, as its quite sluggish sometimes, and he would like to be able to play games on 'higher' settings.
BUT he has a maximum current budget of £120 GBP

His specs are as follows:
CPU - AMD FX 6300
Motherboard - MSI 970 Gaming (AM3+)
RAM - 8GB HyperX Fury (2x4gb sticks)
GFX Card - EVGA GTX 960

So does anyone have any suggestions on possible upgrades for him
Short of new MB and new CPU any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
 

Garilia

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Mar 28, 2014
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It's hard on that budget to substantively improve performance, but there are a few things to consider. The Geforce GTX 950 is actually a slightly better card than the 960. He could consider buying another 960 and running them in an SLI. I don't think a RAM u[grade is going to work, because he's stuck with DDR3 with that board. I don't know what Mhz the HyperX Fury he has is, so if he doesn't have 2133, he could get some 2133 and oc that.

What else could he do? Clean up his computer. Erase bloat and adware. Possibly reinstall the OS, and see if that helps. Does he have an SSD drive as a boot disk? A SSHD drive would help. The following links are by me assuming he has a desktop.

SSD

Get a Hybrid


Revive it

If he's dissatisfied with his performance after that, he's going to need to get a new mobo and cpu that can run DDR4, and put in a GTX 1070. Even a GTX 970 would improve his performance substantially, but that's at least 100 or more pounds beyond his current budget. With the 1070 coming out, it's conceivable he could get into a 970 for under 210 GBP. The 1070's are going to be in the neighborhood of 265-300 GBP. This is the problem with budget builds that are running on hardware that is pushing 4 years old.

Let me know how it goes.
 

weallhavedreams

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Awesome thank you for your suggestions, I will relay the info back to him, and will probably suggest for me to 'rebuild' his system and re-install his OS (Do you know if there is any performance increase however small if I were to install Windows 8.1 or even 10 he's currently on Windows 7 Ultimate or Professional i forget) as his current build has hideous cable management and isn't really optimal for airflow.

I think he does have an SSD as his boot drive and HDD for storage already but im not 100% sure how he has set them up? (he may be using the HDD similar to a removable drive, i.e dragging files back and forth instead of setting things up to be stored there automatically)

If he were to save his current £120 and save up to buy a 1070 when its released (or even see if 970/980's are more affordable after the 1080/1070's are released) would his current CPU cause a bottleneck on any of these cards?

Yeh ive said this to him RE: old components/board, but he's not the best at saving lol so he is a bit hesitant to spend much more than £120 (its a miracle he's saved that much lol)
 

Garilia

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A single 970 should run fine with that CPU. Even if that board was overclocked to the max, the 1070 would probably be too much, he'd definitely be on borrowed time. Bottlenecking can occur within one game and not another. The beauty of building your own/upgrading your own, is that one can buy one part at a time over a month or two, and before you know it, you have a brand new kit.
 

weallhavedreams

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Ok sorted I know what I'll do now then I will tell him to keep the money and just save until he can move over to intel (and he will just have to 'deal' with it until then)
Would I be right in saying AM3+ is the most recent socket i.e not really a newer board had could upgrade to?
 

Garilia

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Currently, yes. AMD is expecting to release AM4 in June. I started seeing articles around January that talked about a March launch, and that's become June, so at this point I think of it like I do news about upcoming games from Blizzard...I won't believe it until I see it. :)

Anyway, if you think I've helped, can you pick one of my answers as the solution? Cheers.
 

weallhavedreams

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HAHA ok yeh i see your point so he probably best re-installing his os, sorting out his Cable management, re-building and just saving.

You have helped but I think i set this as a discussion so I cant choose a 'solution' but thanks for the help :)