Advise me as if this were your own money

[ushy86]

Hi all, I'm just looking for some serious input here quickly as I am nearing pulling the trigger on a purchase. I have always had AMD cpu's in the past, but until now I am left wondering if all of these action rpg games that I play are suffering due to my fx 832s0 slow core speeds. I am talking about Marvel Heroes, Grim Dawn and a few others. I suffer fps drops in dense areas of action where the screen is heavy with players and when particles are everywhere. I rarely see min fps differences/changes in these games if i run ABSOLUTELY maxed or low/med.

So I have a fx 8320 @ 4.7ghz currently alongside a gigabyte 760. I am considering getting a i5 4690k and an asus z97-a mobo tomorrow. I have been told but am unsure, that the i5 4690k coming from a fx 8300 series is a good 65% faster on single cores. Thoughts? Ideas? Mind you once again, that I typically play games that are cpu hogs, but occasionally like playing titles outside my particular genre(arpg).

My other specs are as follows:
win 10
8gb ripjaws
250g evo
2x24" monitors, but I only game on one and browse on the other
650w psu
msi 990 fx mobo


thanks in advance!

 

[CalebRockeT]

If it were my own money, I would make due with what I have. Cheers!

 

[CPA]

Since gaming is my hobby of choice and where I spend quit a bit of my discretionary income, I would make sure that it's an enjoyable experience. Therefore, if I believe that the upgrade would make my hobby more enjoyable, I would do it. In fact, I would probably bump up my ram to 16GB and change over to a 780Ti or even 970 graphics card.

 

[BxgJ]

Can you spend a bit more to upgrade the video card?

 

[jlee]

I think your video card is the problem here, not CPU.

 

[Denithor]

Quick sanity check - reduce CPU to stock speed (or even underclock it) and run several of your laggy games. Do they get worse or remain the same? If they get worse, a faster CPU would likely help you. If they don't change, it's probably your GPU holding you back.

I'm guessing you run at 1080p or 1200p on a single 24" screen? A 760 should be enough for that in most games. You say you don't see big changes (in fps?) when you increase or decrease visual settings, this would tend to imply you are CPU bottlenecked.

 

[sweenish]

Marvel Heroes would benefit from a better CPU, at least in lobbies, but you'd also need a great internet connection. MMO's are known to be CPU hungry games.

For all around QoL, I'd pull the trigger on the upgrade. Windows will likely need re-activating, but it's a fairly painless phone call.

You could just use the bench feature of this site to compare the chips side by side and see how different they are.

 

[jlee]

Quick sanity check - reduce CPU to stock speed (or even underclock it) and run several of your laggy games. Do they get worse or remain the same? If they get worse, a faster CPU would likely help you. If they don't change, it's probably your GPU holding you back.

I'm guessing you run at 1080p or 1200p on a single 24" screen? A 760 should be enough for that in most games. You say you don't see big changes (in fps?) when you increase or decrease visual settings, this would tend to imply you are CPU bottlenecked.

Ah, I misread that - I thought he was saying that the min/max doesn't vary much when he's at minimum detail.

Looking at a bench of his CPU, there's definitely a lot of CPU gain available by upgrading.

 

[ushy86]

Hmm I thank you all for contributing thus far. I see quite a bit of back and forth though. I will do a few more tests with default clock speeds and the OC. But I truly believe cpu is the culprit here and not the gpu personally speaking. I was just hoping to gain some knowledge from you all in terms of how much performance I can expect going from a 8320 to a i54690k. If anybody is still around, please continue to convince me

 

[tential]

If I was you, I'd get the 6700k, or wait for Kabylake, and get that i7 processor. I'd actually wait for Kabylake as that will add a decent mhz bump I bet just like Devil's Canyon did to Haswell.

There is no way I'd use an FX processor in the games you're talking about in which you are playing online with heavily dense action packed areas.

Especially given the longevity of an i7 processor, you're using it for 5 years, it's worth every penny of the $350-$280 they're asking for it.

I have no serious plans to upgrade my 4770k personally in the near future. It's that fast for gaming. But I'll build an HEDT platform mini PC watercooled in the next 2-3 years for fun. But that 4770k will last me til 2018 easily for gaming purposes. The longevity of that purchase is amazing.

You can then upgrade your GPU whenever you need to, but I expect the CPU/mobo if you get an i7 kabylake to last for a long while...

MMORPG players need great CPUs.

 

[darkswordsman17]

It might be worth it but I'm a bit skeptical that it will make a huge difference. If it was a simple CPU swap, then no problem, but you're gonna have to reinstall Windows (and even with an SSD that's still a hassle).

The reason I say I'm somewhat skeptical is that I don't know that any of those games are known for being technically stellar, so you could spend a bunch and not get much benefit because the game is fundamentally not performing stellar regardless. But then, it is possible that the Intel single core performance would make all the difference as I don't think most of those are that demanding of games.

Also what's your internet connection? That could have a big impact on your performance in some games.

And assuming you've checked other programs running and things like that? Always something to check I occasionally get substantial CPU use from various websites for no good reason. For instance, I could have it minimized and not have changed for a while, but if I have my Youtube subscriptions page open it'll for no reason eat 10%+ CPU use (and cause random lagginess in other programs), closing that tab gets things going smoothly again.

 

[ushy86]

You guys are making it difficult on me hahah. Well honestly, I have done extensive research for the games that I play and asked people their configurations in general and most who ran the game rather worse had amd processors given their slower speeds. Also as mentioned, I want to make that switch over to Intel regardless as I feel amd has haunted me all of this time lol. The only other thing haunting me currently is the thought of getting a gtx 970 or better if I were to sell my current 760. However. I'm not techy enough to know if the card would solve all of my problems or if its a CPU thing(my main problem). And I have my doubts that amd will put out any great processor's out when competing with intel down the line.

Ps. I also have a potential buyer for my 8320 and msi 990fx at a $220 price point(Canadian). So I figured, I'd have to decide sooner than later and there isn't much more time for testing. As for the reformat and all of that, I have zero issue with it, as it just comes naturally with these type of things.

 

[Seba]

I also have a potential buyer for my 8320 and msi 990fx

Can't you also sell your DDR3? And then switch to Skylake + DDR4?

 

[ushy86]

Can't you also sell your DDR3? And then switch to Skylake + DDR4?

I am being a nuisance here sorry guys, but I cannot get a definitive answer that allows me mentally to pull the trigger.

As for your question about selling the ram, perhaps, it depends on the person. I am sort of going back and forth in my email with potential buyers. I am just trying to figure out the best move from here. If I manage to sell the cpu/mobo/ram which route do I go for an absolute performance boost without overspending? ~ $500 canadian.

And with all of the people mentioning upgrading my video card, that is now up for debate... gtx 760 -----> 970??? VS 8320 -----> i5 4690k or higher.

 

[jlee]

My video card statement was made on an erroneous interpretation of your problem - if you are not seeing your minimum FPS change when you drop detail level down, I would recommend the CPU route.

 

[ushy86]

My video card statement was made on an erroneous interpretation of your problem - if you are not seeing your minimum FPS change when you drop detail level down, I would recommend the CPU route.

I just re-read that, sorry. I thought somebody else mentioned a gpu upgrade as well. Worth mentioning, I now have a potential buyer for my 8320/mobo/8gb ripjaws for around $250 CAD. I'm assuming that is a fair price that I could use towards a new cpu/mobo route.

Would it be wise to go anything above a i5 4690k at this point? As I have heard that for mere gaming that cpu would suffice generously.

 

[Seba]

If you go with Haswell, don't sell your DDR3 memory.

 

[BxgJ]

I just re-read that, sorry. I thought somebody else mentioned a gpu upgrade as well. Worth mentioning, I now have a potential buyer for my 8320/mobo/8gb ripjaws for around $250 CAD. I'm assuming that is a fair price that I could use towards a new cpu/mobo route.

Would it be wise to go anything above a i5 4690k at this point? As I have heard that for mere gaming that cpu would suffice generously.

I just asked if you could upgrade that along with the cpu. Yeah do cpu first, if you need to upgrade the gpu you can do that easily later.

 

[Rakehellion]

I'd upgrade the GPU, not the CPU. But if it were my own money, I'd save it for a few months and go even bigger.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Install GPU-Z and CPU-Z, and turn on logging. Watch your core use and CPU load while running your game.

If one thing is running consistently over 90% utilization, and the other isn't, that's your bottleneck.

If you've got 3-5 of your 8 cores loaded heavily and the others are idle, your games might not be multi-threaded enough to get good use out of your CPU.

If your CPU is over 70% utilization on all the cores, you probably need to replace it with an i7. If you see high utilization on only half the cores or so, you can replace it with an i5. If your GPU is significantly bottlenecking you, you'll probably need to go with at least a 970.

That's how you pick the winner. I'm not all that familiar with the games you mention in your OP, so I can't make a specific recommendation. It's entirely possible that you're CPU limited and things would be awesome with a new CPU and your old GPU. Or the inverse - your CPU is yawning in the corner while your GPU sweats.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

^ That's the way to do this, but I'd use MSI Afterburner and overlay the cpu & gpu loads real time. There doesn't have to be guesswork when you can generate some hard performance numbers for your specific uses.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

I recommend the below:

6700k
16gb DDR3 2800+
290/390/290x/970

If the above is too expensive, buy second hand:

2700k/3770k
16gb ddr3 1600/1866+
290/780 Ti

 

[DigDog]

should you upgrade? no.

do you want to upgrade? yes.

sounds right? your cpu is still good for a little longer, so you are not going to get any "makes sense" arguments. but nobody said you need to wait until the last second to upgrade.
and considering the fact you can get some sweet dough out of selling your cpu/mobo, i would totally go down the Skylake path + ddr4.

also .. you are running these games from an SSD, right? right?

 

[skipsneeky2]

I would buy a better gpu,best you could afford like a 970 or 290x used.

Any bottlenecks you may have you could easily pump up AA or apply DSR and improve graphical fidelity.The power wouldn't go to waste either way.

Any newer titles your going to be handicapped by the 2gb of ram on your 760.Correct me if you got the 4gb model but the majority of people have a 2gb model.

Already dropping enough settings on my 2gb 770 these days.......

 

[JujuFish]

I'd upgrade the GPU, not the CPU. But if it were my own money, I'd save it for a few months and go even bigger.

This is, in fact, what I'm personally doing. I'm very curious to see how Nvidia's Pascal microarchitecture performs. I'm expecting a very respectable gain over the 7950 I'm currently running.