Upgrade path, which direction to go

[Radium_Angel]

My son's PC is an AMD FX-6300 with a 750Ti video card, and 12 GB DDR3 RAM.

So far, so good.

For xmas, I'd like to upgrade the CPU (the board will support an FX-8300) but I thought perhaps the money would be better spent on upgrading the GFX card.

He is a student so it's more than sufficient for studies, but he does want to play the new Doom game, which I understand is heavy on the resources.

 

Which direction would you go?

No overclocking suggestions please.

[Lurick]

1060 3GB or 1050Ti, depending on the resolution and detail settings.

 

[Jurrunio]

Graphics card first, dont get another FX. It wont give extra gaming performance.

[BluJay614]

7 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

My son's PC is an AMD FX-6300 with a 750Ti video card, and 12 GB DDR3 RAM.

So far, so good.

For xmas, I'd like to upgrade the CPU (the board will support an FX-8300) but I thought perhaps the money would be better spent on upgrading the GFX card.

He is a student so it's more than sufficient for studies, but he does want to play the new Doom game, which I understand is heavy on the resources.

 

Which direction would you go?

No overclocking suggestions please.

That is actually a very interesting question.... If you are not willing to go for a full platform change, I'd say the graphics card. Otherwise, I'd say a Ryzen 3 or a G4560 (however, both would require a new motherboard and DDR4 RAM) then getting a used graphics card. However, I understand if that is too much.

[NelizMastr]

I'd like to know which motherboard is in there. Many boards list 8300 chips as compatible but they fry the VRMs like crazy. I second the others. GPU first, then the rest of it later.

[Radium_Angel]

4 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

I'd like to know which motherboard is in there. Many boards list 8300 chips as compatible but they fry the VRMs like crazy. I second the others. GPU first, then the rest of it later.

I don't have it off the top of my head (I'm at work) it's a gigabyte. Hold tight, let me think....

(insert elevator musak here)

 

Thank you for holding, it's a GIGABYTE GA-78LMT-USB3 (rev. 6.0) AM3+/AM3 AMD 760G USB 3.0 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard, which states, assuming they are telling the truth, CPUs higher than the 8300

[NelizMastr]

Just now, Radium_Angel said:

I don't have it off the top of my head (I'm at work) it's a gigabyte. Hold tight, let me think....

(insert elevator musak here)

 

Thank you for holding, it's a GIGABYTE GA-78LMT-USB3 (rev. 6.0) AM3+/AM3 AMD 760G USB 3.0 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard, which states, assuming they are telling the truth, CPUs higher than the 8300

Bad idea. The VRMs are pretty poor. Stick to the 6-core and go Ryzen or Coffee Lake down the road.

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, NelizMastr said:

Bad idea. The VRMs are pretty poor. Stick to the 6-core and go Ryzen or Coffee Lake down the road.

So hold off on the CPU/GPU upgrade altogether?

[NelizMastr]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

So hold off on the CPU/GPU upgrade altogether?

GPU upgrade is fine, that doesn't have anything to do with the CPU VRMs. The GPU won't be fully utilised in case of a 1060 but that's not a big issue as it can be re-used later.

[Radium_Angel]

Just now, NelizMastr said:

GPU upgrade is fine, that doesn't have anything to do with the CPU VRMs. The GPU won't be fully utilised in case of a 1060 but that's not a big issue as it can be re-used later.

Looking about on the web, I'm not seeing anything about bad VRMs...got a link handy? I'd like to read more.

[bdubbs]

I am another one that agrees that GPU is the way to go. I wouldn't buy an 8300 unless it was for like $20 and I say that as an owner of one in my old machine. 

 

 

[cluelessgenius]

well idk know about the budget but i would also suggest getting a new gpu now and then take on the cpu later some time because it will mean new board and ram. while on the topic of ram im a bit curious why such a rather low configured pc needs 12 gigs of ram.

upgrading to something higher FX will give your VRMs a hard time and also since its the same architecture it wont give you much more gaming perfomrance anyway.

id get a 1060 or 1050ti or maybe at that level id even consider AMD for the GPU espeicially for doom in this example. maybe a RX580

[Kimmaz]

This is my computer, i benchmarked it to compare the numbers to those cpu reviews on youtube, and i am waiting a year or 2 to upgrade my cpu. Unless there comes some sick drop in ram prices, a 4x8gb ddr4 kit cost almost the same as a i7 8700k where i live.. and im not upgrading from 16gb to 16gb ram, thats not a upgrade.

 

Computer:
CPU: AMD FX-8350 (4.1GHZ)
RAM: 8x2GB DDR3 1866MHz Timings 9-10-9-27
Motherboard Model: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 (rev. 3.1)
Video Card: ASUS GeForce GTX 1070 DUAL OC
Drive 0: SAMSUNG HD103UJ (1TB)
Drive 1: SAMSUNG HD103UJ (1TB)
Drive 2: Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB
Drive 3: ST4000DM005-2DP166 (4TB)
Drive 4: ST2000DM (2TB)
Drive 5: ASUS DRW-24F1ST a SATA CdRom

 

Benchscores:
PCmark10:    3941
-Essentials:    6244
-Productivity:    5124
-Creation:        5193
Cinebench R15:
-OpenGL:        83.23
    -Ref:        99.6%
-Cpu:            641
-SingleCore:    96
    -MP ratio:    6.68x
Passmark:        3543
    -Cpu:        9610
    -2d:        554
    -3d:        9386
    -mem:        1403
    -disk:        4647
CPU-Z Bench:
-Single Thread:    234.0
-Multi Thread:    1591.0
7-zip: (Total Rating)
-Cpu usage:        729%
-Rating/usage:    3230MIPS
-Rating:        23532MIPS
RealBench:
-System Score:    83,639
-Image editing:    93,162 (57.19s)
-Encoding:        58,123 (91.67s)
-OpenGL:        105,001(19355KS/s)
-Multitask:        78,272 (97,51s)
Unigine Valley Benchmark:
-FPS:            78.5
-Score:            3285
-Min fps:        22.9
-Max fps:        131.7
Unigine Heaven Benchmark:
-FPS:            114.4
-Score:            2881
-Min fps:        26.3
-Max fps:        232.6

[Radium_Angel]

1 hour ago, cluelessgenius said:

well idk know about the budget but i would also suggest getting a new gpu now and then take on the cpu later some time because it will mean new board and ram. while on the topic of ram im a bit curious why such a rather low configured pc needs 12 gigs of ram.

upgrading to something higher FX will give your VRMs a hard time and also since its the same architecture it wont give you much more gaming perfomrance anyway.

id get a 1060 or 1050ti or maybe at that level id even consider AMD for the GPU espeicially for doom in this example. maybe a RX580

I had it lying around.

No other reason.

The wattage of the 8300 is identical to the 6300, so I don't see where that's an issue...

[cluelessgenius]

4 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

I had it lying around.

No other reason.

The wattage of the 8300 is identical to the 6300, so I don't see where that's an issue...

well i mean ok if you can get one somewhere for 20-40 bucks then you could do that but gpu is gonna make much more of a difference