Upgrade or New PC?

Effex · September 25, 2014

So here is my specs

FX 6100

HD 7850

2x4gb 1600mhz Vengeance Ram

ASRock 970 Extreme 3

2x500gb HDD's

OCZ Fatal1ty 550watt psu

NZXT Phantom 630

Now my GPU wont play all of the games I want to play at good frame rates on max settings these days. Yes it still manages great frames on BF4 etc, but some of the games I want to play maxed just lag massively. I also hear coil whine.

My CPU probably wasn't the best choice when I built my PC... BUT I came from an Athlon II 250 (I think that was the CPU)

The ram is fine, rarely use it all, only when I'm using Photoshop/Aftereffects/Etc

The motherboard is still pristine I think, I don't think there is any issues with it at all.

The PSU seems to be fine, haven't had issues I think.

My 2 Hard drives are basic 7200 rpm and I hear them quite easily too.

The case I love but I didn't realize exactly how massive it was.

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So would it be smarter to upgrade to an FX 8320 and get a new R series Card or go with something like a 780/970 from nVidia? Would I need to think about upgrading the Motherboard and Ram/Psu ETC?

If it'd be better to just build an entirely new PC what spec sheet would you be able to advise me to use that would give me a good upgrade from what I have and keep cost to around $1000-1200 ?