Need advice for a relative, CPU upgrade or GPU upgrade?

[Boze]

I didn't know whether to post this to CPUS and Overclocking or to Video Cards, but here goes...

I have a younger cousin, he's 16, he just got his tax refund from his part-time job, and he wants to upgrade his computer somewhat.

He's running an AMD FX-6300 overclocked to 4.0 gHz with an EVGA GTX 660 card. He's got 8 GB of DDR3 1600 RAM, and he asked me what would be the bigger upgrade, a GTX 970/980, or a Core i7-4790K and a new motherboard. He can obviously switch the RAM over and use it. I told him to let me think on it for awhile, but I felt like the CPU might be holding him back more than his GPU, but I'd need to look at some benchmarks to be certain.

He only has a 1080p gaming monitor, so he won't be using higher resolutions like 1440p / 2160p. On top of all this, I told him I'd buy his CPU & motherboard for $90. I can throw them into an old case with a few sticks of RAM and a spare SSD and find a use for it.

What's your advice for him? He likes playing the latest games, so I told him if it were me, I'd lean towards the GTX 970 / 980 upgrade, especially since a kid he goes to school with has a TITAN X on pre-order, and he's willing to sell an ASUS ROG GTX 980 to him for $400. $400 seems like a pretty hard-to-beat deal on the one of the top-end video cards out there right now, but I figured it anyone would know, it'd be you guys.

 

[coolpurplefan]

I'd go with a GTX 960 then get an Intel Skylake CPU when they come out.

 

[myocardia]

You never said how much money he has to work with, in total. A GTX 980 is at least twice as fast as a GTX 660. Buying it will give him the best return on his dollar, unless his favorite game is WoW, which is highly CPU-dependent. If I were him, I would buy the friend's 980, and only upgrade another part of the system, if I had money left over.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Actually, that seems like a pretty well balanced system. What is his total budget to spend? It seems to me that upgrading either one will be limited by the other. What i mean is, i would not use that cpu with a high end gpu, but that gpu will hold back a high end cpu.

Could he upgrade both, maybe an FX8350 with that motherboard, and a 290/290x? I guess barring that, I would upgrade the gpu first. He could crank up the image quality now, and use the stronger gpu later if he can upgrade the cpu.

Edit: I guess a used 980 for 400 dollars is a good deal if it is fairly new and still has some warranty left, especially since he is buying it from someone he knows. However, you can get a brand new 970 or 290x with full warranty for less, and both are still pretty powerful cards.

 

[scannall]

GPU will be the best bang for the buck. Like someone else suggested a NVidia 970 or 980 would be a huge increase. You didn't mention if he has an SSD or not. If not throw one of those in as well. That will be HUGE.

 

[Boze]

He's got a $400 budget, and yeah, I gave him an old OCZ Vertex 4, 256 GB if I recall.

 

[crashtech]

Traditionally, Nvidia GPUs do fairly well with a CPU that might be a bit weaker than desired. A Hex-core FX like that 6300 shouldn't really hold it back too much, imo. If he has a good cooling solution it might be fun to push it a little harder and see what happens.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Neither makes much sense in isolation. Why run an unlocked i5 or i7 with a lowend GPU in a gaming build? It probably won't perform any better than with his FX-6300. And why pay even $400 for a GTX 980 when you'll be lucky to get GTX 770 level performance out of it with an FX-6300?

I would not go the 980 route unless he's planning on getting a locked i5 + H97 board or better in the near future, my reasons being:

1. A used GTX 770 is worth maybe $200 and that's the performance he'll likely get out of a 980 when held back by FX-6300.
2. By the end of the year Nvidia could end up rebranding its 980 as the new 70-series GPU like they did with the 770, and then you could just buy it brand new for $400 or less.

So if he can't uprade the CPU and board for 6-8 months, a used 980 seems like a waste of money. Besides, AMD might have something that smashes a 980 by then for that price, considering how close the R9 290x is to it right now for $330.

If you put a gun to my head and said I had to pick one, I'd upgrade the CPU and board. Reason being, in a year an i7-4790k will still likely be a complete monster of a CPU the same way an i7-3770k and an i7-2600k are now. So even though he won't notice any difference right now, when it comes time to get a new GPU he can put whatever he wants into it.

But if it was me I'd hold on to that $400, save up a few more dollars, and buy a balanced CPU + MB + GPU combo at once. Or if he doesn't want to go over budget, get an R9 280 for $170 to pair with the FX-6300 and save the other $230.

If you're going to go big on one of CPU and GPU you pretty much have to go big on the other too or it's money wasted.

 

[Geforce man]

Is micro center an option ? 4790 and board for 350, sell the 660 for 100, spend 250 on an r9 290. Ultra win.

 

[coolpurplefan]

All of this is frankly a little bit weird in a way. This is before Microsoft comes out with Windows 10 with Directx 12 which should be faster. Pascal from Nvidia should be faster. And Skylake ought to be faster unless Intel takes another 10% incremental step.

 

[Boze]

All of this is frankly a little bit weird in a way. This is before Microsoft comes out with Windows 10 with Directx 12 which should be faster. Pascal from Nvidia should be faster. And Skylake ought to be faster unless Intel takes another 10% incremental step.

Kiddo has heard that from me on more than one occasion.

He's 16 though, and he's got some money, and its burning a hole in his pocket. Most of us can remember what that's like. Married people with kids might be too far gone to know the sensation, but I can remember when I was 22 and the Navy handed me the first $7000 of a $20,000 enlistment bonus. I got a new 14" Sony VAIO laptop that was heavy enough to bludgeon someone to death with, but I didn't care because I could play games on it, and not long after that, my best bud and I went on a 2.5 day bender that lasted from 1600 on Friday until 0300 on Monday, so... I know where the kid's coming from.

That said, he usually listens to me, and I'll try to convince him to wait for Skylake. I feel like desktop Skylake processors are at least 10 months out though - probably 12 - 18. I don't think we'll see them before December of this year. Broadwell hasn't even dropped yet. He might be willing to hold off for awhile, though. I can (vaguely) remember what its like at that age... 9 months is the equivalent time of the heat death of the Universe.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

All of this is frankly a little bit weird in a way. This is before Microsoft comes out with Windows 10 with Directx 12 which should be faster. Pascal from Nvidia should be faster. And Skylake ought to be faster unless Intel takes another 10% incremental step.

Isn't Pascal coming out in 2017 or so? And how much are you expecting from Skylake when Intel's main focus since Ivy has been power consumption since it has no challenger when it comes to processing power on the desktop? I'd be more than a little surprised if Skylake is any kind of significant bump in performance since the mainstream i5 and i7 will still be quadcores and IPC improvements have slowed to a crawl with Ivy, Haswell, and Broadwell.

 

[crashtech]

...why pay even $400 for a GTX 980 when you'll be lucky to get GTX 770 level performance out of it with an FX-6300?...

I don't think this assertion will be borne out by an examination of the facts.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I don't think this assertion will be borne out by an examination of the facts.

Generally, not. But it is possible, depending on the game. For instance Game.gpu test of Total War, Atilla.

1080p, GTX770 with overclocked 5960x gives 27FPS

Similar settings, FX6300 with 980 SLI gives 26FPS.

Granted the overclock on the OPs FX will ameliorate that somewhat, but point is, I would not pair an FX6300 with a GTX980.

 

[escrow4]

Kiddo has heard that from me on more than one occasion.

He's 16 though, and he's got some money, and its burning a hole in his pocket. Most of us can remember what that's like. Married people with kids might be too far gone to know the sensation, but I can remember when I was 22 and the Navy handed me the first $7000 of a $20,000 enlistment bonus. I got a new 14" Sony VAIO laptop that was heavy enough to bludgeon someone to death with, but I didn't care because I could play games on it, and not long after that, my best bud and I went on a 2.5 day bender that lasted from 1600 on Friday until 0300 on Monday, so... I know where the kid's coming from.

That said, he usually listens to me, and I'll try to convince him to wait for Skylake. I feel like desktop Skylake processors are at least 10 months out though - probably 12 - 18. I don't think we'll see them before December of this year. Broadwell hasn't even dropped yet. He might be willing to hold off for awhile, though. I can (vaguely) remember what its like at that age... 9 months is the equivalent time of the heat death of the Universe.

No point waiting. Go 5820K and X99 and you won't need to upgrade the CPU for a long long time, just the GPU. The CPU is the foundation, you gimp that high end GPU upgrades make no sense.

 

[Boze]

No point waiting. Go 5820K and X99 and you won't need to upgrade the CPU for a long long time, just the GPU. The CPU is the foundation, you gimp that high end GPU upgrades make no sense.

The kid's entire budget is $490, man.

The 5820K alone is $390, then he has to get an X99 motherboard, DDR4 RAM, and a cooler, and frankly if you're getting a 5820K, you might as well get a water cooler.

Furthermore, if I was going to tell him to go Haswell-E, then I'd tell him to save up for a 5930K, because if you're going to spend $800ish on your guts, might as well go whole hog and get the 40 PCI-E lanes, instead of being stuck with 28 on a 5820K.

I did read today though, that Intel says Skylake will not be postponed. Normally I chalk that up to bullshit, but with Windows 10 coming out in June-ish, they might want to position a Skylake / Windows 10 release. Dunno... I came here to give him a clear cut answer and now even I'm wondering what the hell to do...

Frankly I'm glad I built my Haswell-E machine as soon as they dropped... I don't have to worry about this crap.

 

[AtenRa]

I would wait fot the AMD R9 380/390 to release in a couple of months and see how much of a price cut all the GPUs up to GTX980 will get.

Unless he cannot wait that long then a GTX980 at $400 now, is much better than upgrading his CPU/Mobo.

 

[Idontcare]

Yeah he's about a year behind the entry-point curve because we are on the eve of so much that is about to be released. If this was 1 year ago we'd be talking about hardware upgrades that would be good for years, now you are talking about upgrades that will be trumped in a matter of months.

Convince him to open a Scottrade account, put the $400 on Disney, sit back for 6 months while the cpu and gpu stuff comes out (making today's stuff much cheaper, if he doesn't want to get the new stuff then), sell his Disney stock for a profit (very likely) and buy even more hardware than he otherwise could have.

 

[coolpurplefan]

Convince him to open a Scottrade account, put the $400 on Disney, sit back for 6 months while the cpu and gpu stuff comes out (making today's stuff much cheaper, if he doesn't want to get the new stuff then), sell his Disney stock for a profit (very likely) and buy even more hardware than he otherwise could have.

I've tortured myself for a long time with the financial markets, with no real success. My latest idea though (even though people don't usually like the same level of risk) is to gradually buy inverse of volatility ETFs while the markets are tanking (like when the Fed decides to raise interest rates) and sell obviously when the prices go back up. I say gradually because you can never buy at the absolute bottom and sell the absolute top. (Even buying $100 of shares every $5 increment could work out, in theory I'm guessing at this point.)

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I don't think this assertion will be borne out by an examination of the facts.

You could be right. When I said that I was looking at the GameGPU benchmark for Far Cry 4, where they found a min of 39 fps, average of 58 fps with an FX-6300 and a GTX 980 at 1080p ultra. GTX 770 had 39 fps min, avg 53 fps with an i7-5960x in the same benchmark at 1080p ultra. Seems like I may have underestimated the 6300 though for well parallelized games, as in Dragon Age Inquisition they found a minimum of 54 fps and an average of 61 fps at 720p with an FX-6300, and CPU performance is independent of resolution. So in that game FX-6300 + GTX 980 would actually be pretty well balanced. So if the trend of games becoming better parallelized holds (and it probably should since they're designed for octacore consoles), it might not be an enormous bottleneck like it is now for games like Dying Light or FC4 which aren't that well parallelized.

 

[crashtech]

Well I might not go so far as to say a 6300 + 980 would be well balanced, but it will work. Hopefully the user would be able to then do a platform upgrade in not more than a year's time, before the 980 becomes a bad fit for a new system. But it seems like the best bang for the buck right now is the GPU, not for all games, but most.

I would try to crank up the CPU a bit more, ST performance is what is lacking on the FX, and increasing speed will help.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I meant balanced for that specific game. It's way unbalanced now for most games though.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Well, point is, I dont see the sense of paying 400.00 for a gpu, and not having a well rounded cpu that will be a good performer in *all* games. (In fact I would not pay 400.00 for a gpu ever, but that is another issue, and just my personal preference.)

In any case, I suppose he could buy the 980 now for 400.00 and upgrade the cpu/mb later. Otherwise, I would just get a 290x or GTX970 brand new for less money to pair with an FX 6300. I dont think anyone ever addressed this, but as I said, unless the 980 has some warranty remaining, I would be very reluctant to pay 400.00 for it. In my experience, GPUs are one of the more likely parts of a PC to fail.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Well, point is, I dont see the sense of paying 400.00 for a gpu, and not having a well rounded cpu that will be a good performer in *all* games. (In fact I would not pay 400.00 for a gpu ever, but that is another issue, and just my personal preference.)

In any case, I suppose he could buy the 980 now for 400.00 and upgrade the cpu/mb later. Otherwise, I would just get a 290x or GTX970 brand new for less money to pair with an FX 6300. I dont think anyone ever addressed this, but as I said, unless the 980 has some warranty remaining, I would be very reluctant to pay 400.00 for it. In my experience, GPUs are one of the more likely parts of a PC to fail.

Good point on GPU failure.

 

[AtenRa]

Most GPUs come with at least 2 years of guaranty, that means that any 980/970 used cards today have at least 1.5 year of guaranty left. ASUS, MSI and others even give 3 years so i wouldnt worry for the GPU.