Suggestions needed for upgrade..

[Jemaine_Clement]

Hi all,

Ok so up until today I have been looking at a new CPU and motherboard.. My current setup is in my profile (Athlon II X4 635 @2.9GHz, 7gb DDR3 and a 560ti 448 core)..

Now, I was set on an 8350 and a decent budget AM3+ motherboard and I have been trying to find CPU benchmarks for Battlefield 3 multiplayer..

All I have been able to find so far has been beta benchmarks, which seem to show that there is not much difference between the Athlon 645 (a little faster than my current CPU) and, for example, an i5 2500K or even an i7 2600K..

I have found that my performance has slowly been decreasing in BF3 with every patch, even after upgrading my 460 1gb to the 560ti 448 (1.25gb) I have currently.. My CPU does seem to be bottlenecking slightly and I was under the impression that upgrading to an 8350 would give me a decent bump in performance by helping me get the most out of my GPU..

So my question is what do you guys think I should do?? Should I go for the 8350 or look at a new GPU??

Please bare in mind that I primarily play Battlefield, whilst I do play other games this is where I spend the majority of my gaming time.. So obviously I will be playing BF4 when it is released while trying to improve my experience in BF3..

I appreciate you taking the time to read and any responses..

Thanks,

Jemaine

[bradscoolio]

There will definitely be a large performance increase with a cpu upgrade considering how old yours is. If you were to upgrade anything it would have to be your cpu because it would bottleneck if you upgraded anything else ;)

you can squeeze even more performance out of it if you overclock, jst make sure you get a 990fx motherboard like the asrock extreme 3 variant

[Guest]

How much have you got to spend?

[Nort]

Your 560 ti is fine. Here it is reported running BF3 at 30FPS+ on ultra settings and 50FPS+ on high settings: http://anandtech.com/bench/Product/547

Your CPU is the most likely culprit and an FX-8350 or even an FX-6300 would give you a nice boost.

Here is an AM3+ motherboard under $100: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131872

Keep in mind this board doesn't support SLI, so you might have to go for something more expensive if you want that option.

[Jemaine_Clement]

Thanks for the replies all.. :-)

My budget, realistically, is no more than £200.. The reasoning behind going with the FX8350 was initially to save a little cash, but also because I am looking to stream in the future which I understand the chip is good for..

To be honest I will probably not attempt to overclock my CPU for the foreseeable future, and I would always go with a single card configuration so an SLI ready board is not imperative either.. I also doubt I would be able to find the same GPU to SLI anyway..

Thanks again all for your input, it is very much appreciated..