What to upgrade next, improving gaming performance (Solved)

la235711 · 15 Oct 2018 at 00:25

I am planning on upgrading my PC and was looking for suggestions on what to upgrade next. I have a budget of about £250 and my current PC specs are listed below:

Operating System : Windows 10

Motherboard: ASUSTek Computer INC. P8H61-M Pro (5 years old)

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500 3300 (5 years old)

GPU: GTX 1060 6GB (less than a year old)

RAM: 2x4GB DDR3-1333 (PC3-10600) SDRAM (Kingston) (about as old as the PC)

HDD: Hitachi HDS5C3020ALA632 (Approx 1.8GB) (came with PC about 7 years old)

Currently, I am getting 30+ FPS on games like ARMA 3 and SCUM, not what I would expect for this setup. I am worried that my CPU or old motherboard may be bottlenecking my GPU, or my lack of extra RAM may be causing large frame drops (10 FPS) when looking about. I was planning to upgrade my motherboard to something like the [Asus B150 Pro] and getting 1x16 GB of DDR4 RAM along with it. I can get by with my hard drive at the moment (I know a SSD would be better but not my priority right now), my CPU could be upgraded but that would exceed the budget.

Any suggestions regarding my questions would be appreciated, thanks.

arc@css · 15 Oct 2018 at 09:31

Hello.

What is your monitor/resolution?

NovaKill4 · 15 Oct 2018 at 09:57

la235711 said:
I was planning to upgrade my motherboard to something like the [Asus B150 Pro]

la235711 said:
my CPU could be upgraded but that would exceed the budget.

You understand that upgrading your motherboard would mean you have to upgrade your CPU right? the CPU you currently have will NOT work in a B150 motherboard...

la235711 · 15 Oct 2018 at 15:16

arc@css said:
What is your monitor/resolution?

Desktop & Active Signal Resolution: 1920x1080

Refresh Rate 60 (Hertz)

Bit Depth: 8-bit

la235711 · 15 Oct 2018 at 15:18

NovaKill4 said:
You understand that upgrading your motherboard would mean you have to upgrade your CPU right? the CPU you currently have will NOT work in a B150 motherboard...

That motherboard was just a example, I am unsure if I should just save up so I can upgrade the motherboard, RAM and CPU at the same time. Maybe go for late intel i5 or i7 CPU.

pastymuncher · 15 Oct 2018 at 15:23

Hi and welcome to the forums.

Your Sandybridge cpu and motherboard are several generations old and not compatible with anything that is available now. You could drop in a second hand Ivybridge i7 3770 (need to flash the motherboard bios first) but they are still going for £70-100 on Ebay and for the performance increase it just isn't worth it.

Another option would be to sell your current cpu and motherboard and buy a second hand Haswell bundle but to be honest it's not that much of a improvement over Sandybridge and will cost near enough to the cost that you can upgrade to a modern platform.

Unfortunately if you want to upgrade to a modern platform you have to upgrade the cpu, motherboard and memory. You have no choice about the memory as both Intel and AMD both use DDR4 now so if you upgrade the cpu and motherboard you will need memory as well. Fortunately AMD is the saviour of budget gaming right now and you can get a cpu/motherboard/memory for just over your £250 budget that will be much more powerful than your current setup. You could lower the cpu to get withing budget but I really wouldn't go any lower than what I have suggested. Only 8Gb of memory because 16Gb will take you past £300.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Team Group Vulcan T-Force 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C16 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (TLGD48G3000= £68.99
1 x Asrock B450M Pro4 (Socket AM4) DDR4 MATX Motherboard= £79.99
1 x AMD Ryzen 5 Quad Core 1400 3.40GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £112.99

Total: £272.47 (includes shipping: £10.50)

orbitalwalsh · 15 Oct 2018 at 15:26

SSD and i7 2700k - cant oc it but will run faster, handy for CPU bound games like arma

or as above, ryzen

6 cores 12 threads - not the best with ARMA but BF games it'll love

CODE
My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Gigabyte B450M-DS3H AMD B450 (Socket AM4) DDR4 Micro-ATX Motherboard= £69.95
1 x AMD Ryzen 5 Six Core 1600 3.60GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £134.99
1 x Team Group Vulcan T-Force 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C16 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (TLGD48G3000= £68.99

Total: £284.43 (includes shipping: £10.50)

la235711 · 15 Oct 2018 at 15:47

Thanks for the suggestion.

I am going to hold back on the upgrading my CPU, motherboard and RAM until I have a better budget, however I will look into the CPU you suggested.

orbitalwalsh · 15 Oct 2018 at 15:54

la235711 said:
Thanks for the suggestion.

I am going to hold back on the upgrading my CPU, motherboard and RAM until I have a better budget, however I will look into the CPU you suggested.

look carefully at games you play as well, some are more CPU limited then GPU like arma . pros and cons to intel vs amd at the moment but rzen pricing is to good to miss unless you like to play arma at the highest levels etc

la235711 · 15 Oct 2018 at 16:05

I am looking into Ryzen 5 1600, good pricing, performance and I believe the motherboard you suggested is compatible with my GTX 1060 6GB. I may go for 1x8GB RAM as appose to 2x4GB to save a RAM slot and selling my old CPU and motherboard to make up additional costs.

la235711 · 15 Oct 2018 at 16:24

Do you use AMD for general use or gaming, if so could you give me your opinion on its performance.

la235711 · 15 Oct 2018 at 16:32

orbitalwalsh said:
look carefully at games you play as well, some are more CPU limited then GPU like arma . pros and cons to intel vs amd at the moment but rzen pricing is to good to miss unless you like to play arma at the highest levels etc

I don't play arma on high graphics settings and would be happy with a stable fps of 45 FPS or above. The problem I am having is with the stable part, even on singleplayer Arma or games like it, my FPS drops like crazy when changing what I am looking at. High object areas such as forests and Cities I get about 20FPS.

Journey · 15 Oct 2018 at 17:01

Jebus man, buy an SSD and re-install Windows 10 with the latest drivers, there is no way that your system is running right getting that sort of FPS at 1080p on a GTX 1060. Just the SSD alone will make it feel like you bought a new system.

la235711 · 15 Oct 2018 at 17:30

orbitalwalsh said:
SSD and i7 2700k - cant oc it but will run faster, handy for CPU bound games like arma

or as above, ryzen

6 cores 12 threads - not the best with ARMA but BF games it'll love

CODE
My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Gigabyte B450M-DS3H AMD B450 (Socket AM4) DDR4 Micro-ATX Motherboard= £69.95

1 x AMD Ryzen 5 Six Core 1600 3.60GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £134.99

1 x Team Group Vulcan T-Force 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C16 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (TLGD48G3000= £68.99

Total: £284.43 (includes shipping: £10.50)

Thank you for all your help, looking at your suggestions I found a found a bundle thats I can afford, while not sacrificing performance

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/amd-...ram-free-240gb-ssd-online-only-bu-01f-am.html

AMD Bundle - AMD Ryzen 5 2600, Gigabyte X370-Gaming 3, Team Group RAM *FREE 240GB SSD* *ONLINE ONLY*
Stock Code BU-01F-AM

for £330. This upgrades my motherboard, RAM, CPU and Gives me a 240GB SSD. This is useful for all my gaming and work related problems.

I am going to finalize my research and just to say couldn't have done this without you.

Journey · 15 Oct 2018 at 17:34

Unless the games you play need more than 4 cores/threads you are only getting a 200MHz bump and 10-15% IPC so don't expect it to go from 30FPS to 60FPS.

la235711 · 15 Oct 2018 at 18:13

I run a quad core and its more than enough, I understand that a hex core is a bit overkill, but i need a cpu upgrade as mine is nearly 6 years old.

orbitalwalsh · 15 Oct 2018 at 18:30

Single core 5ghz , would have said i3 8350k would have been sweet when they were prices normally . Beast of a chip at 5ghz+ and good for games such as arma for single core performance .