Partial upgrade advice needed

[drthrd]

I bought a SSD and external USB 3.0 drive and decided it would be nice to use USB 3.0 and my rig is old. I have around $300 to spend. I first thought about going AMD then I looked around and seen where Intel i3 performs just as good or better than the FX-8350. I will be playing games and doing some video editing and word processing. Would it be better to go with the i3 or AMD?

CPU AMD Phenom II X2 550.

Motherboard BIOSTAR Group N68S3B http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=517.

Case Diablotek CPA-9611B Mid-Tower Case http://diablotek.com/v2.0/DOWNLOAD/specsheet/CPA-9611B.pdf

Video Card GV-N550OC-1GI http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3799#ov

Memory 2 4GB DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) modules. Patriot Memory 1333EL Series

Power supply Corsair TX750W http://www.corsair.com/en-us/tx750w

Fan is GeminII Series or Vortex Plus. I do not remember which. http://www.coolermaster.com/product/Lines/cpu-air-cooler/

For AMD, I was thinking about using my case, power supply and memory. Then later on upgrade to a FX-8350. I was looking at the ASUS M5A97 line. I looked around and from I have seen they say if you are going to overclock the GA-970A-UD3P would be better. Could I use my memory without affecting performance much? I know Corsair stopped making the TX series but why? Is the TX line still ok?

For Intel, I was going to go cheap i3 then upgrade to a i5 later. Still want to use my case, power supply and memory if possible. Not sure about using the power supply and memory with a Intel upgrade though. I see the new Intel processors are using DDR4 memory. I know little about Intel builds.

 

[Seba]

If games are the main focus of this upgrade, start with a better graphics card. Even a cheap GTX 750 Ti 2GB would be much better than your GTX 550 Ti 1GB.

 

[drthrd]

I think my main problem is my CPU. I think most of the games I play are CPU intensive. This is from World of Tanks.



Brown is my CPU load. Blue is GPU load. Red is memory load.

 

[Ken g6]

Why not both?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: *Intel Core i3-4160 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor ($111.95 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: *Gigabyte GA-H81M-H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($32.98 @ Newegg)
Video Card: *Asus GeForce GTX 950 2GB Video Card ($118.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $263.92
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-04 11:24 EST-0500

Actually, I'll tell you why not both: You might need a new Windows license to go with your new motherboard. :\ Actually, is your computer on something older than Win7?

 

[drthrd]

Why not both?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: *Intel Core i3-4160 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor ($111.95 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: *Gigabyte GA-H81M-H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($32.98 @ Newegg)
Video Card: *Asus GeForce GTX 950 2GB Video Card ($118.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $263.92
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-04 11:24 EST-0500

Actually, I'll tell you why not both: You might need a new Windows license to go with your new motherboard. :\ Actually, is your computer on something older than Win7?

Thank you. Didn't think I good pull off both lol. I was running Win7 then did the Win10 free upgrade. I would like to have 2 more SATA connectors. I have 3 hard drives right now and a DVD burner. The SSD drive would make 4 hard drives. Might have to do something different though. 2 of the hard drives are IDE and I am using a converter for them.

Will the i3-4160 outperform the FX-8350 overall?