Hardware & Technical Planning on upgrading, need best advice with my budget

nosscar

nosscar
Hopefully later this year, or early next, i am planning on upgrading.
I currently have
Desktop. FX 6300 3.5ghz. 8 Gb DDR3 ram, 256 GB SSD, 2TB Hitachi HDD,
MSI R9 280 Twin Fozr OC 3GB, OCZ modxstream pro 600W psu.
Strike-X One Advance Mid-Tower, Win 10 64bit.

My question is, i will have around £400 budget, i think i would like to get a better CPU and maybe a new graphics card, like the RX 480, or GTX 1060, i would like to go with intel cpu, but that looks expensive with having to buy another m\board, so might have to upgrade to a faster AMD cpu, but what do YOU think is my best bet, given my budget, and am i better waiting until early 2017.
I use this rig just for gaming, so i want to know the best way to use £400 to get max game performance i can.
 
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The Chairmaker

The Chairmaker
I think the RX480 is possibly going to be more future proof than the NVIDIA cards, due to the evidence we are seeing re AMDS superior relative performance in DX12 and Vulkan API's, which will be the basis of most major games in the next few years.

With regard to CPU. Intel is the natural way to go at present. For general use, I5 processors are most suitable. Be aware though that coming out very soon ( next 3 or so months) is ZEN from AMD, this may disrupt Intels dominant position in CPU's somewhat by offering a viable high performance CPU for a good price. Something that AMD have not had for nearly a decade.

Interestingly ive read that Zen will allow you to use AMD3+ coolers such as those on your fx6300, on the zen processor. This should therefore save you some money if you go down the zen route.

Zen does use DDR4 memory though so something to bear in mind as it would mean the need to get brand new memory.
 

Porina

Porina
I think for the budget, you do either CPU or GPU, not both. Question then is, what would give the biggest improvement?

How are the graphic quality settings and framerates currently? From memory the 280X I used to use was fine at 1080p Ultra at 60fps (before horizons), but still I'm thinking a GPU would likely give a bigger boost especially if you have higher resolutions. Choices right now would be the 480 but I'd question if the improvement is enough to be worth it, as opposed to going higher end or waiting for later GPUs. 1060 is supposed to be out next week and it remains to be seen what that will do. 1070 would be a bigger step, but eat all the budget.

CPU wise, depends if you overclock or not how much that goes. A basic non-OC i5 setup still isn't simple, since you'll be looking at a CPU, mobo, ddr4 ram if going Skylake as opposed to Haswell (ddr3). Plus the new mobo would likely need a new windows licence. An after market cooler is always a good improvement over the intel one. Obviously if you want an OC capable setup the CPU and mobo would cost a bit more...

AMD zen is a big enough unknown... rumours are all over the place both in timescale and performance. I wouldn't plan on waiting for that if you feel you need more CPU now.
 

nosscar

nosscar
My current gpu gives me 60fps in space flight, around 35-45 on planets at mostly high-ultra settings,i only use my rig on a 32" tv, so 1080p resolution.
I agree i may not have enough budget to do both, if so,should i upgrade my cpu or gpu, the gtx 1060 does indeed look tempting though if it is at a good price of £150 - £200. then maybe even go for a second user itel i5 and mobo, i was planning on upgrading to 16mb ram if possible too. So maybe ddr4 if needed. Also i could sell my original parts to try increase my budget a little that way.
I upgraded my pc from Win 7 to Win 10 on the freebie, i registered it with my microsoft account, so it is not now registered to my motherboard, which i changed when i had win 7 anyway. So should this still now be free to just use with a new board, as i will be keeping the same hard drive and files, it should just pick up the new configuration hopefully, and install the needed drivers.
 

xondk

X
nosscar said:
Hopefully later this year, or early next, i am planning on upgrading.
I currently have
Desktop. FX 6300 3.5ghz. 8 Gb DDR3 ram, 256 GB SSD, 2TB Hitachi HDD,
MSI R9 280 Twin Fozr OC 3GB, OCZ modxstream pro 600W psu.
Strike-X One Advance Mid-Tower, Win 10 64bit.

My question is, i will have around £400 budget, i think i would like to get a better CPU and maybe a new graphics card, like the RX 480, or GTX 1060, i would like to go with intel cpu, but that looks expensive with having to buy another m\board, so might have to upgrade to a faster AMD cpu, but what do YOU think is my best bet, given my budget, and am i better waiting until early 2017.
I use this rig just for gaming, so i want to know the best way to use £400 to get max game performance i can.
Click to expand...
Your system is quite good all things considering, I would recommend upgrading to a bit more ram, so you can get 16 or such, and then a new graphic card, both RX 480 and GTX 1060 would do great.
 

nosscar

nosscar
ok, so it appears the gpu upgrade is favourite just now, but wondering if upgrading to AMD 8xxx series is a worthwhile upgrade, might be able to manage that and another 8gb ram, whilst saving on a new board.
Is there any performance difference with the 8xxx series over my fx6300 with 8 cores rather than 6.
Are there any other Amd cpu's that are faster than the FX, but fit the AM3+ board.
The amd zen chip might be worth waiing for if it fits am3+
 
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Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Robert Maynard
nosscar said:
ok, so it appears the gpu upgrade is favourite just now, but wondering if upgrading to AMD 8xxx series is a worthwhile upgrade, might be able to manage that and another 8gb ram, whilst saving on a new board.
Is there any performance difference with the 8xxx series over my fx6300 with 8 cores rather than 6.
Are there any other Amd cpu's that are faster than the FX, but fit the AM3+ board.
The amd zen chip might be worth waiing for if it fits am3+
Click to expand...

Zen will be AM4 and require DDR4. I've been waiting (im)patiently for news of its arrival - it is expected Q4 this year - with a rather significant performance increase over the FX-8350 (for the 8-core 16-thread Zen variant).

I don't know how much benefit you'd get from an FX-83xx over the FX-6300- I have one in my PC - the only thing that immediately springs to mind is the base clock increase from 3.5GHz to 4.0GHz - it rather depends on how much benefit the game would take from an additional two cores in multi-threading.
 

nosscar

nosscar
Robert Maynard said:
Zen will be AM4 and require DDR4. I've been waiting (im)patiently for news of its arrival - it is expected Q4 this year - with a rather significant performance increase over the FX-8350 (for the 8-core 16-thread Zen variant).

I don't know how much benefit you'd get from an FX-83xx over the FX-6300- I have one in my PC - the only thing that immediately springs to mind is the base clock increase from 3.5GHz to 4.0GHz - it rather depends on how much benefit the game would take from an additional two cores in multi-threading.
Click to expand...

Yes looks like your right, now if i could afford a new board, and if the zen is cheap enough, if only.... i wish.

http://wccftech.com/amd-zen-cpu-per...edposts_origin=199401&relatedposts_position=1

"AMD "Summit Ridge" will be an 8-core CPU built on the 14 nanometer silicon fab process. It will feature eight "Zen" cores, with 512 KB of L2 cache per core, 16 MB of L3 cache, with 8 MB shared between two sets of four cores, each; a dual-channel integrated memory controller that likely supports both DDR3 and DDR4 memory types; and an integrated PCI-Express gen 3.0 root complex, with a total of 22 lanes. We can deduce this from the fact that "Summit Ridge" will be built in the same upcoming socket FM3 package, which the company's "Bristol Ridge" Zen-based APU will be built on. "Summit Ridge" will hence be more competitive with Intel's 6th generation Core "Skylake" processors, such as the i7-6700K and i5-6600K, than the company's "Broadwell-E" HEDT platform."
 
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nosscar

nosscar
I always like to research before buying anything, and this thread and info is of great value to me. Thankyou.

So going on new gpu either rx480 or Gtx 1060, upgraded AMD cpu, possibly the AMD -fx 8730.
Using Ziemans link (thankyou kindly) it has a passmark score of 8918.
Higher than the Intel i5 6600k (which i always thought was a good gaming cpu) that has a passmark of 7798.
My present FX 6300 has a passmark of 6340,
The fx 8370 has 125w TDP, my FX6300 has 95w TDP, so same m\board, would same cooler be fine.

The passmark scores look like a big improvement, but are they really, would i see any large benefits for my £135.
(personally on the chip side, i think waiting for some price drops needed)

Also with say the GTX 1060, are bottlenecks going to be a problem with either AMD cpu.
 
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MickyG1982

M
Robert Maynard said:
Zen will be AM4 and require DDR4. I've been waiting (im)patiently for news of its arrival - it is expected Q4 this year - with a rather significant performance increase over the FX-8350 (for the 8-core 16-thread Zen variant).

I don't know how much benefit you'd get from an FX-83xx over the FX-6300- I have one in my PC - the only thing that immediately springs to mind is the base clock increase from 3.5GHz to 4.0GHz - it rather depends on how much benefit the game would take from an additional two cores in multi-threading.
Click to expand...

It's why I'm sticking with my current system my 860k is just about capable of playing EDH at a decent speed at 1080p with high settings on a GTX 960. When it does drop it'll be time for a new budget build based around that & a 1060 me thinks.
 
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