Solved! What's my bottleneck? G4560, 8GB DDR4, R7 260X 2GB? Worth gaming on in 2019 at all? (For friend's kids)

[VirtualLarry]

Asking for myself, kind of for a friend. Built that rig for them, maybe two years ago. Something is wrong with it now, and said friend hasn't brought it by for me to take a look at, and months have gone by. Is it even worth fixing? Assume upgrade / repair budget is $100-150. Would it be better to replace CPU or GPU? Mobo is entry-level, and I don't believe that it allows OC'ing.

Will Fortnite or Minecraft play on something like that?

 

[happy medium]

Your bottleneck is the videocard.
A gtx1060 is the fastest card I'd recommend for 1080p resolution.
So a 1060/1650 super, rx570/ 580 would be great.
I'd grab a used Rx570 for 75$, or mabe a used gtx970 ,it should play most modern games well with that cpu.
Next, I would double the ram.

Intel Pentium G4560 Review: a great budget gaming CPU

Hyper-Threading in a Pentium? It's blasphemy, and also pretty cool.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[VirtualLarry]

So the CPU would still be good, with a GPU upgrade? That's good to know. I kind of suspected that might be the case, but I'm not a huge PC gamer these days so I didn't really know.

Was thinking, if the problem is the GPU (likely), then swapping in a GTX 1650 (Super) might be in order, and a 16GB kit of DDR4 to replace the 8GB kit.

 

[Arkaign]

If it already has 8GB, stick with that. 1650S is great, but RX470/480/570 may be 75% or more of the performance at 50% of the price, and more than good enough for a solid 1080p medium (AAA) or 1080p Ultra (Minecraft/Fortnite/Indie) gaming rig. A great balance with the 2C/4T CPU as well.

So if you think $75ish GPU up to $100, then that leaves $50-$75 for a 480GB SDD, maybe a nice fun RGB gaming mouse from Amazon to add in as a cherry on top.

 

[Arkaign]

https://www.amazon.com/Redragon-M602-Ergonomic-High-Precision-Programmable/dp/B011HMDZ0Q/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?keywords=RGB+mouse&qid=1576564960&sr=8-4

I'm normally not the biggest RGB bling bang fan, but kiddos generally love this stuff. Got my son this one, and to be honest I think it feels 99% as good as my $159 model lol. Actually kind of handy to have the lit mouse in the dark too.

Redragon has some RGB KB+Mouse combos for $20-$30 also.

 

[Shmee]

What socket/chipset is that? I would upgrade the GPU and the CPU first, if you can stretch the budget a bit. But I guess the real question is, what problems is is it having?

 

[VirtualLarry]

What socket/chipset is that?

Kaby Lake. 3.5Ghz, 2C/4T dual-core w/HT, media-decoding, etc.

It was well-loved for "budget gaming" a few years back. I built a rig for a friend's kids with it, and threw in a GPU I had around, an R7 260X. Still have another one of those. Anyways, he said it wasn't working, last time that they hooked it up, there was a "black screen". (Wonder if the HDMI cable just got loose?)

If it's not the cable, then it's probably the PSU or video card. (Card is fairly ancient at this point, and was mined on heavily a few years ago.)

 

[mopardude87]

I found this and it looks like Fortnite would be fine even with a 1050ti.

Often times getting well over 80 here. Not really dropping under the 70s. Would pump out more with a 1060 of course but not a bad showing.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Bumping and re-visiting this.

I recently upgraded / fixed my friend's i5-2400 Dell rig, after his GTX 1050 2GB GDDR5 ITX card "died" on him. (Shame he never dusted it, hmm.)

Well, when he got it back, he complained, like the PC in this thread that I built him, that it was "lagging and stuttering".

Come to find out, when he got the PC back, he plugged the HDMI for the monitor, into the mobo Intel iGPU. Amazingly, it still played Fortnite, with settings really lowered, and wouldn't even launch Genshin Impact, even after re-installing the game, as my friend decided to do.

So now I'm wondering, if the "lag" that he was talking about for the PC in this thread, was because he ALSO plugged in the HDMI into the Intel iGPU (Kaby Lake), and was trying to play Fortnite on it. (Intel HD 510 graphics)

I mean, if his i5-2400 (Sandy Bridge) Intel iGPU managed to play Fortnite, perhaps the Kaby Lake iGPU would manage it even better.

Anyways, I'm going to propose that my friend bring me this older PC with the G4560 if he still has it, I'll bump the RAM to 16GB (think that I have another 8GB stick kicking around), drop in a bigger SSD (possibly, got some Team Group CX1 480GB SATA 2.5" SSDs for $39.99 recently), and then re-format Windows 10 onto it, and drop in the left-over GTX 1050 2GB GDDR5 ITX card from the other thread, that's "ghetto zip-tied" to a 120mm case fan, and put together another semi-respectable (for mostly e-sports titles ONLY) gaming PC, that he could sell to a co-worker, and we could split the proceeds, or at least, cover my cost in parts and maybe a few bucks for my labor.

 

[Leeea]

The key is to disable the iGPU in BIOS and force them to use the discrete GPU.