Look at my build

[m6u3]

I have a Gaming PC with the following components

CPU:Athlon X4 760K
GPU: EVGA GTX 960
MOBO: Asus A88X-E

my question is should i upgrade m cpu or just overclocked to get better performance in games?

 

[Yuriman]

Well, overclocking is the cheaper option. Are you using the stock cooler? What wattage and brand power supply do you have? You can probably get another 20% or more performance pretty easily out of your chip, depending on the answer to those two questions.

An i5 is around 60% faster per clock, give or take, which means a stock i5 should be close to a 6ghz Athlon x4 760K, which is far higher than you can reasonably expect to overclock. However, an i5 setup will cost you at least $50 (motherboard) + $180ish (CPU), minus what you're able to sell what you have for, while overclocking will cost you nothing.

EDIT: Having a 60% faster CPU will not help when you're GPU limited, of course, so it depends on what games you're playing too.

 

[stockwiz]

Depends on your budget.. wait until skylake and get the 6600K... your CPU isn't the fastest in the world but it's passable for most stuff at 1080p. I would not upgrade just the CPU (buying another AMD chip) ... save and upgrade the whole system with a skylake part.

 

[Yuriman]

Right, there isn't really a reasonable upgrade that you can just drop into your board. You're pretty close to as fast as it gets with socket FM2.

 

[DrMrLordX]

OP, you should overclock the CPU to figure out how much clockspeed you can get out of that thing. Unless you are pushing 5 ghz with it, you could get an 860k (or the upcoming 870k) and see a mild improvement in performance at a very low price (assuming you overclock that chip, too). Any other option is going to involve the expense of going to an entirely different platform (new motherboard, if you "wait for Skylake" you're buying new RAM too).

If you're going to put the money down on going to an Intel rig, I'd recommend that you wait for Skylake, and then buy Haswell. Save some money and recycle that DDR3. You'll still see a good deal of extra performance over a 760k that way.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Bull.. you'll see no increase in anything going from 760K to 860K.You should do what I did and just ditch AMD for now and get something Intel. Or Just overclock the snot out of what you've got now.Or you could even put your stuff up for sell and upgrade to something better.I came from a 760K overclocked to 4.6Ghz and upgraded to a Intel i7 4820K and its almost 4 times faster then my old 760K at almost everything.Mainly my encoding times for Handbreak went from 1 hour to around 15 mins or so.for me thats all I care about but what is it you are needing more umph for?? Games or something else?? If for games maybe upgrade to a better Gpu..

 

[Denithor]

Overclock what you've got while you wait for Skylake to be released.

But also, game performance is highly dependent on your GPU and screen resolution. So, increasing CPU power drastically may only result in mild improvements in gaming (for example, if you are trying to game at 4K resolution on a GTX 960, no amount of increased CPU is going to help).

 

[Shehriazad]

Bull.. you'll see no increase in anything going from 760K to 860K.

Unless of course they run at the same clock speed...as the 860K smashes the 760K clock for clock.

The 760K might OC a little better...but you'd need 5 Ghz to somewhat be equal to the 860K @ 4.7 Ghz...and both values are pretty much a chip lottery WIN.

In bad case scenarios you'd end up with both being at around 4.5 Ghz on both of them..in which the 860K will pull ahead of the 760K.


Anyway...try OCing your 760K first...if you can't get it stable above 4.6 Ghz and you don't want to spend a lot of money...the 860K is a good option since 4.5 Ghz there should equal 4.7-4.8 on the 760K.


Your other options consist of:
Waiting for FM3 socket with Zen. (Not so soon, but probably the cheapest out of the "wait" options)
Waiting for Intel Skylake (Soon, but probably on the more expensive side)
Buying some nice i5 right now if you got some more money to throw around. (Around $170-$200 for a CPU and then whatever fits your pocket for the mainboard...if you don't OC, a cheap board for $50 would do the trick I suppose)
Buying some ancient FX right now, FX63XX or FX83XX are really cheap right now...but not every game might be able to use all of these additional threads...leaving you with NO difference at all if the games run on 2-4 threads...questionable upgrade.


Question is though...do actually NEED more CPU power right now? I mean Witcher 3 even at my resolution is VERY playable on ultra settings for me without the trashy hairworks of course...since even 970s or 980s totally tank in performance if you use it...and all that for VERY questionable hair physics which look worse to me than the non hairworks solution. (lowest is low 30s and "good zones" are in the mid to high 50s for me)

I would imagine that your 760k would equal that performance if you push it to 4.4 Ghz....which should be easy, given that the 700k series OCs like mad unless you lost the lottery. I run my 860K undervolted @ 4.1 Ghz and am VERY happy with my gaming performance...so far nothing was "so" CPU limited for me that I couldn't play it. (Anything non shooter needs to be 30 for me and fps needs to be 60 for me...so far no problem).


To me my most limiting factor would be Vram on those badly optimized AAA titles...so I'd look at a GPU upgrade before a CPU upgrade. Wait for AMDs new lineup to release to see if some prices change imo ^^

 

[Yuriman]

"Smashes" might be going a bit far. Semiaccurate found the average improvement to be around 11% per clock, but there was a regression in both stock clocks and maximum overclock.

Another factor to consider is that Steamroller's performance advantages are (if I remember correctly) mostly in multithreaded loads due to a reduced module penalty. Games are more typically heavy on 1-2 threads while making light use of another 0-4 threads. If OP's use-case is gaming, I don't think an 860K would be worthwhile as a drop-in replacement due to minimal improvement for money spent.

That said, new CPUs aren't far away. I find it hard to justify buying what's on the market right now, Intel or otherwise.

 

[DrMrLordX]

There are plenty of games out there that make heavy use of four cores. In a year or two, the percentage of PC games that do so will only go up, DX12 hype or no. We can't assume he's got a golden 760k . . . there are plenty of them out there that may not hit higher than 4.2 - 4.5 ghz depending on his luck and cooling. 760ks can get pretty toasty. The stock HSF on an 860k can get you to 4.3 easy, and some lucky sods can ride that to 4.5. Higher will require better cooling, which (in the short term) would appear to be a poor investment. Long term is a different story, but that's a different topic for a different thread.

In any case, an average 11% performance increase isn't bad depending on what he'd have to pay to get an 860k (right now I'm seeing $70). An Intel solution would undoubtedly provide even more performance, albeit at a higher price.

 

[Shehriazad]

I feel like the majority of AAA titles in 2015 have multithreaded properly to at least 4 cores.


And while singlethread IPC gain is only topping out at somehwere between 5%-10% compared to older generations....multithreaded gains were 15-20%.

Especially games like Witcher 3 or GTA V will show some clear fps differences here...that said, I actually did agree that the upgrade wouldn't be "worth it" all that much.

Unless of course the 760K is a loser of the chip lottery and can't push past 4.5/4.6 Ghz and he doesn't have money to throw around.

In my opinion the 760K and 860K are both more than capable enough of "surviving" throughout 2015 gaming and wait for Skylake AND Zen to arrive.



One thing I have to say, though...I will burn anyone alive that goes ahead and suggests a Pentium g3258 as "upgrade" for him. It's already showing its strong weakness in AAA titles like witcher 3 or GTA5 that do properly multithread...while getting better averages once overclocked...stuttering and framerates tanking below 30 make it clear that dual core is not an upgrade in 2015...and not in 2016, either.

Either get a fake quad (i3) an i5...or endure until 2016 and see if AMD can pull a Fury X for the CPU market.

 

[FxSoap]

pretty sweet build!