Upgrading 5-6 years old PC.

[Dima]

Ok so I have:

 

- Phenom II x4 955 at 3.8GHz

- AMD HD 6870 1GB GDDR5

- Gigabyte GA-770T-D3L (which is in horrendous shape)

- PSU 500w which is not a no-name (can't remember the name right now, but it's decent)

- 8GB HyperX 1866 MHz RAM

 

I wanted to buy RX 470 and was wondering how much of an improvement would I see if I plug it in into this system. I want to upgrade to Intel platform but doing so would cost me 300+ euros which I don't think I'm willing to do right now. Not to mention that I have Thermaltake V3 or V4 with Noctua NH-D14, I don't even know how this PC survived this long. My mobo survived 2 lightning strikes do to me having ADSL and not unpluging my phone jack during storms, it fried my onboard ethernet and audio so I am using 2 PCI-E slots and my BIOS is bugged and I cannot access it  I mainly play WoW, CS:GO, H1Z1, Overwatch and stuff like that. Currently in WoW I cannot play in a raid setting with a preset of 1 without my FPS going lower than 30, and in Overwatch i feel my mouse floaty probably because of FPS drops, all settings low render scale 100%. Motherboard still works

[vorticalbox]

in games that are GPU bound you should see a nice fps boost. How much hard to say for sure.

[john826472]

21 minutes ago, Dima said:

Ok so I have:

 

- Phenom II x4 955 at 3.8GHz

- AMD HD 6870 1GB GDDR5

- Gigabyte GA-770T-D3L (which is in horrendous shape)

- PSU 500w which is not a no-name (can't remember the name right now, but it's decent)

- 8GB HyperX 1866 MHz RAM

 

I wanted to buy RX 470 and was wondering how much of an improvement would I see if I plug it in into this system. I want to upgrade to Intel platform but doing so would cost me 300+ euros which I don't think I'm willing to do right now. Not to mention that I have Thermaltake V3 or V4 with Noctua NH-D14, I don't even know how this PC survived this long. My mobo survived 2 lightning strikes do to me having ADSL and not unpluging my phone jack during storms, it fried my onboard ethernet and audio so I am using 2 PCI-E slots and my BIOS is bugged and I cannot access it  I mainly play WoW, CS:GO, H1Z1, Overwatch and stuff like that. Currently in WoW I cannot play in a raid setting with a preset of 1 without my FPS going lower than 30, and in Overwatch i feel my mouse floaty probably because of FPS drops, all settings low render scale 100%.

Your CPU is pretty good so i would just get another AM3 socket motherboard and an RX 470. Your CPU will be fine playing most games but your 1gb graphics card will struggle playing even games like minecraft. Upgrading to an RX 470 will give you about three times the performance. However your CPU is about equivalent to a i5-2100 which quite decent. Just get a new decent motherboard and maybe even overclock your CPU a bit because you've got a very beefy cooler.

[sftgunner]

vorticalbox is correct in that most games that demand more GPU resources (GPU bound) than CPU resources, then you would see higher frame rates - the RX 470 is a good upgrade. However, WoW, CS:GO and Overwatch are all very CPU intensive - so your frame-rate is likely to be capped by your Phenom II x4. The question is how much your frame rate would increase. TBH, I haven't been a member of the PC Masterrace for that long, so I couldn't say for sure - sorry!

[BenoitWW]

as @Aladd2040 said, you cpu is equivalent to an i3-2100. still pretty solid. http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Phenom-II-X4-955-vs-Intel-Core-i3-2100/2935vsm41

 

if you have the cash, you priorities would be:

 

1. GPU: RX 470 / GTX1060

2. MBD: ASRock 970M PRO3 / MSI 970A-G43

 

 

[Dima]

Thank you for the input guys, you are the best. One last question before I go for it. The 470 I wanted to buy is 4GB, and there is 8GB which is 30e more expensive, is it worth it? 

[BenoitWW]

7 minutes ago, Dima said:

Thank you for the input guys, you are the best. One last question before I go for it. The 470 I wanted to buy is 4GB, and there is 8GB which is 30e more expensive, is it worth it? 

if playing 1080p then the 4GB is probably fine. 1440p is borderline either but would go for 8GB. if higher than 1440p or 1440p widescreen or 2+ monitors, then 8GB for sure