Starting slow

[A_Chad9]

I just joined tech tips, so bear with me...

I am looking for some advice on upgrading my system.  I currently have:

AMD AM3 Phenom II x6 3.2  

ASus M4a87TD evo MB

16GB  Gskill DDR3 1600

EVGA Gforce 560 Ti

 

I am have done a few AMD builds over the years, due to the cost, but  am thinking about jumping to Intel

My main consern is mother board, and CPU.  I am going to re-use as much  of my  old hardware as possible, (ram, and Video)  I have a new SSD for the OS.  Also  thinking I want to jump to win 8.  I am looking at upgrading the video card in the next 8-12 months.

I primarily use my PC for gaming and photo editing. (mostly gaiming, and internet)

 

For CPU I was lookng at the I7 4770K, but might get stuck with a I5 depending on how the budget works out.   I can always upgrade it later...

Mother board a MSI gaming 5, Gigabyte ?  or Asus?.    Haven't heard alot of good about the ASRock, so probly not.

Any thoughts would be great!

Thanks

[Jodomcfrodo]

Wait until you upgrade the GPU to buy a new CPU. Not worth buying anything right now for a 560ti. The new CPU's will be out by the time you said you would buy. 

[harrynowl]

grab a nh-d15, oc your cpu to 4ghz and get a r9 280x. sorted.

[Lord Pantaloons]

MSI boards are nice, if you don't want SLI get the Z97 U3 Plus if you want SLI get the Z97 G55 SLI. They are both around $125 and are solid boards and will work well with an i5 or i7.

[A_Chad9]

grab a nh-d15, oc your cpu to 4ghz and get a r9 280x. sorted.

I am starting to have reliablility issues. lockups, blue screens.  I have had to dial back my over clock.  Kinda why I am looking at new CPU.

Thanks for  the advice though

[A_Chad9]

Wait until you upgrade the GPU to buy a new CPU. Not worth buying anything right now for a 560ti. The new CPU's will be out by the time you said you would buy. 

Would it be worth getting a cheaper CPU and upgrading the GPU a bit, or just wait till I can afford a great GPU?

[Zolon]

If you Cpu is suddenly unstable it could be either the Cpu, the motherboard, the psu or the ram...

If you want to upgrade, amd is not as good for games, due to worse single core performance, but unless you spend a lot on the processor, you will barely notice it in the great picture. Amd processors are a good budget pick, they overclock better, since the cores die area is bigger and can dissipate the heat over a bigger area. So you will not need as a high performance Cpu cooler as you would with Intel (sandy or haswell), but they are hotter in general.

For upgrading your Gpu, if you don't do much Cpu demanding tasks besides gaming, an stronger gpu will net you almost always better performance. The main reason for a powerful Cpu would then be, that you would not have to upgrade the work intensive parts of your build for a while.

Would it be worth getting a cheaper CPU and upgrading the GPU a bit, or just wait till I can afford a great GPU?

It depends what upgrading a bit is. For 1080p gaming a gtx 770 or equivalent will be sufficient for most games on high or ultra.