CPU upgrade

[Sreaction]

Hey what the hell I thought I'd ask what others opinions are about a CPU upgrade. First here are my system specs:

• Phenom II x4 945
• Asus M5A97 R.2 motherboard
• 8 Gb DDR3-1333 RAM
• MSI HD Radeon 7850
• Antec 550 watt PSU Basiq
• Win7 64 bit OS

I want to keep the price well below $200. Lowest price = better

The FX-8350 looks like a good CPU for an upgrade. My concern is that it has a high TDP: 125 watts which means it will run hot.
I have a cooler-master TX3 HS&F with two 92mm fans so I think I am good in that department.

I am waiting for the price to drop as of now it fluctuates between 159 and 169 $'s. Around Dec. 2015 I think it dropped to around $145, I should have gotten it then.

The FX-8320 costs around $161 right now but, Ive seen it at around $139 on Newegg. The difference is .5 Ghz slower clock speed

Im not sure how much of a performance drop the 8320 compared to the 8350 there is or if there really is one. I am not an overclocker so that is out of the equation as far as preference.

So does any one have a similar set up? Let me know what you like / dislike about your 8350 or 8320.
Also, I am in no rush. I can wait. I'm just hoping for the prices to dip again.

 

[Danath]

I wouldn't pay more than an extra 10% of the 8320 price for the 8350., because that's about the effective difference. Prices are indeed fluctuating a lot, but AMD won't have new CPUs until 2017, so I doubt there will be major changes.

 

[In Vain]

What games / applications do you use? Does your current CPU limit you, yet?
I'm asking because it's not a very good moment to upgrade to another AMD CPU, because AMD's FX line is already pretty old and not very efficient gaming-wise. AMD's new 'Zen' processors will probably (hopefully) be released towards the end of this year, but they will need a new socket.
The 8320 and the 8350 are basically the same chip, so the cheaper one can easily be clocked to the same level as the faster one. Make sure, though, that your motherboard actually supports the FX, as, even though they share the same (?) socket, the FX CPU needs a high quality board with good voltage transformer cooling.

If you want to properly upgrade your CPU for gaming purposes, I'd recommend:
- Either wait for 'Zen', but you'll need a new board and DDR4 RAM
- change to Intel and either get a Haswell i5-4460 + H97 board (you can keep your RAM) or a Skylake i5-6500 + H107 board (there are some that still support DDR3 RAM, but I'd recommend buying DDR4, also).

All options will cost you more than 200 bucks (they range from ~220 to 400, I'd guess), but I'd rather invest a bit more now than settle for a compromise that might not last you long.

 

[Splintert]

Don't bother with AMD FX, the performance increase will be negligible over the Phenom II and there are no other advantages.

As stated above, if you want a new processor right now you need to go to Intel for better performance, but it will cost more than $200 very easily.

 

[Sreaction]

What games / applications do you use? Does your current CPU limit you, yet?
I'm asking because it's not a very good moment to upgrade to another AMD CPU, because AMD's FX line is already pretty old and not very efficient gaming-wise. AMD's new 'Zen' processors will probably (hopefully) be released towards the end of this year, but they will need a new socket.
The 8320 and the 8350 are basically the same chip, so the cheaper one can easily be clocked to the same level as the faster one. Make sure, though, that your motherboard actually supports the FX, as, even though they share the same (?) socket, the FX CPU needs a high quality board with good voltage transformer cooling.

If you want to properly upgrade your CPU for gaming purposes, I'd recommend:
- Either wait for 'Zen', but you'll need a new board and DDR4 RAM
- change to Intel and either get a Haswell i5-4460 + H97 board (you can keep your RAM) or a Skylake i5-6500 + H107 board (there are some that still support DDR3 RAM, but I'd recommend buying DDR4, also).

All options will cost you more than 200 bucks (they range from ~220 to 400, I'd guess), but I'd rather invest a bit more now than settle for a compromise that might not last you long.

Currently, I don't notice any limitations on the games I play & and I really don't run any CPU intensive apps. I mainly have been playing older games right now: Fallout New Vegas, Skyrim. I plan on getting the Witcher 3 & possibly Fallout 4.

My motherboard supports up to the FX 8370.

I've been an AMD guy for a while but, more and more I am thinking of getting an Intel. But, I'd have to get a new mobo and ram etc. Just waiting to see if AMD gets their **** together or I am jumping ship.  I am trying to milk this motherboard for all its worth but your right it may not be worth it in the long haul.

Also, I did not know AMD was coming out with a new line of processors relatively soon so that's food for thought too. Thanks for the info.

 

[Krik]

I'm running a Phenom II x6 1045t and it's still giving me good performance on most newer games. That said, it is an old chip and there's not an AMD cpu really worth upgrading to over it. If you can find a really cheap Phenom II that's better than yours go for it, otherwise either wait or jump to Intel.

 

[In Vain]

The Witcher 3 hits the GPU limit pretty early even on low resolutions, so you should be on the safe side. Fallout 4, on the other hand, seems to be a total mess based on an ancient, overburdened engine that sometimes even causes high-end systems to stutter. On top of that, it generally runs better on Geforce GPUs. Try your luck, but don't expect too much.

 

[Sreaction]

The Witcher 3 hits the GPU limit pretty early even on low resolutions, so you should be on the safe side. Fallout 4, on the other hand, seems to be a total mess based on an ancient, overburdened engine that sometimes even causes high-end systems to stutter. On top of that, it generally runs better on Geforce GPUs. Try your luck, but don't expect too much.

Regarding Fallout 4: I am seriously considering waiting a good while till I buy that. If FNV is an example, it will probably take the community a fair time to mod that into a decent game.

 

[Krik]

Fallout 4 is so much worse than NV. They just removed tons of features under the pretense of "streamlining" it.

 

[Sreaction]

Its a shame all the really good game franchises go that way. A victim of its own success. They try to make the game more marketable and end up killing it.

 

[Beny]

Are CPU upgrades a reasonable thing to do? Someone told me its difficult because you're constrained by the specs of your mobo. Might've been bs though.

 

[Krik]

Depends on the exact situation. Usually a gpu upgrade is more important, but not always obviously.

 

[Splintert]

To expand on it, depends solely on the application. Sometimes you run into situations where your CPU will be the limiting component, others your GPU, but most games have a GPU bottleneck.

Basically you have to determine, usually through experimentation, which component is the slowest on the specific game you're trying to play. The easiest way to do this is to disable any framerate limiting settings like vsync or framrate caps, then compare FPS before and after reducing your display resolution to the minimum. If your FPS goes up, your GPU is the limiting component. If your FPS does not change, your CPU is the limiting component.

It's usually more complex than that, however. As an example, Arma 3's shadow setting is calculated exclusively on the CPU. Turning shadows off can increase performance drastically even when your GPU isn't maxed out, because Arma 3 generally hits a CPU bottleneck before a GPU bottleneck. This can be done similarly for other games. By experimenting a bit with settings and watching your FPS, you can determine the following for each setting:

visual effect
performance hit
whether it's a CPU or GPU setting

Using the above information you can optimize not only your graphical fidelity and performance but you can avoid unnecessary system upgrades that have no effect. Don't be that guy with an Intel Core2 Duo and a GTX 980 Ti, or worse, that guy with the Intel i7 5960X and a GT 620.