i7 860 bottlneck, looking to upgrade and on a budget.

[Rashid_8]

Hello, I am currently using a gtx 690 as my gpu and I feel like my processor is acting as a bottleneck (i7 860). I have been using it for around 5 years now an i feel like its time to upgrade. However I am on a budget of around $200 still being in highschool, and am looking for a good cpu that will help me run new games like battlefield. I have looked up on some like the i3 6100, and the i5 6500 which is pricier. Any recommendations on these or other cpus? Help will be much appreciated
Motherboard is asus p7p55d-e lx

 

[Supernova1138]

You're not going to get far on a $200 budget, to upgrade you need a new CPU, motherboard, and RAM as DDR4 RAM is now the standard. Best you could do would be an i3 6100, the cheapest H110 motherboard you can find, and putting the rest of the money towards 8GB of DDR4. The i3 will have significantly better single threaded performance and most of the time would be a better gaming CPU, but you go down from 4 cores and 8 threads to 2 cores and 4 threads. In workloads that scale very well across 8 cores and threads, your i7 would probably be a bit faster than the i3 6100. Most games do not scale that well, but some other applications do.

I'd recommend saving up some more money and moving to at least the i5 6500, which would be better than your old i7 in everything rather than just some things. Finally, you can overclock your CPU if you want to squeeze a bit more life out of it. 1st Generation i7s do not need an unlocked multiplier to overclock and you can increase your CPU clockspeed by modifying your BCLK setting. If you have an aftermarket CPU cooler you might want to give that a try.

 

[Rashid_8]

You're not going to get far on a $200 budget, to upgrade you need a new CPU, motherboard, and RAM as DDR4 RAM is now the standard. Best you could do would be an i3 6100, the cheapest H110 motherboard you can find, and putting the rest of the money towards 8GB of DDR4. The i3 will have significantly better single threaded performance and most of the time would be a better gaming CPU, but you go down from 4 cores and 8 threads to 2 cores and 4 threads. In workloads that scale very well across 8 cores and threads, your i7 would probably be a bit faster than the i3 6100. Most games do not scale that well, but some other applications do.

I'd recommend saving up some more money and moving to at least the i5 6500, which would be better than your old i7 in everything rather than just some things. Finally, you can overclock your CPU if you want to squeeze a bit more life out of it. 1st Generation i7s do not need an unlocked multiplier to overclock and you can increase your CPU clockspeed by modifying your BCLK setting. If you have an aftermarket CPU cooler you might want to give that a try.

Ah ok, thanks alot. And if by an aftermarket CPU cooler you mean not the stock CPU cooler, then no i don't have one so i wont mess up with the clock speed for now.