Advice on upgrade

[ak3mi]

I have a holiday next year which has most of my money invested in (I don't really want to spend a lot of money on a upgrade around £350-£400). However my PC just doesn't keep up with my programming/rendering and gaming needs. I have overclocked my Phenom II x4 955 BE and GTX 460 (768mb) but have put them back down, and I also have 8gb corsair vengeance ram. I have a GA-990FXA-UD3 and I was thinking of upgrading by getting a AMD 8350 and a xfx 290x DD or GTX 970. How much of a performance increase will this give me?

I was thinking about switching to intel and picking up a i5-4690K(I would have to get a new Mobo and heatsink, aswell as the GPU) but because of my holiday I don't really want to spend more money, unless the 8350 and 290x aren't a good enough upgrade for the next 2-3 years. I want to be able to play games on ultra 1080p 60 fps etc and my PC to handle my work related stuff.

Any advice would be great

 

[rolli59]

You will see a massive increase, more than double on the GPU side with those cards (either one, GTX970 better) and good on the CPU. Swapping to Intel would deplete your budget so in your case the FX8350 would be warranted.

 

[ak3mi]

You will see a massive increase, more than double on the GPU side with those cards (either one, GTX970 better) and good on the CPU. Swapping to Intel would deplete your budget so in your case the FX8350 would be warranted.

So a fx8350 would be good enough to run games on ultra for the next few years? Talking about Dragon age inquisition and Witcher 2. If I had a 8350 now and went with Intel would the difference in fps be 5-10 or even more then that?

 

[RaDiKaL_]

"I want to be able to play games on ultra 1080p 60 fps etc and my PC to handle my work related stuff. "

Depending on the game the FX-8350 might not be enough, specially if you plan to have it for the next 2-3 years, so with that in mind I'd say invest in that i5-4690k, but if budget is really a problem take rolli59 advise but be ready to sacrifice some video quality/FPS when playing latest games.

 

[rolli59]

Gaming actually is more depending on the GPU so with those strong cards the FX8350 can keep up and you have a good board for it. It will last as long as any current I5 with those cards although they give a little better performance and would be my recommendations except you already have a board for the FX!

 

[ak3mi]

"I want to be able to play games on ultra 1080p 60 fps etc and my PC to handle my work related stuff. "

Depending on the game the FX-8350 might not be enough, specially if you plan to have it for the next 2-3 years, so with that in mind I'd say invest in that i5-4690k, but if budget is really a problem take rolli59 advise but be ready to sacrifice some video quality/FPS when playing latest games.

Gaming actually is more depending on the GPU so with those strong cards the FX8350 can keep up and you have a good board for it. It will last as long as any current I5 with those cards although they give a little better performance and would be my recommendations except you already have a board for the FX!

Thank you for the advice thus far, been great Just a couple more things:

How much of a sacrifice will I take going for the 8350 compared to the i5-4690k?

How much of "little" are we talking? The game I want to max out the most is dragon age inquisition, other games will be older Witcher 2, maybe Skyrim etc. The problem I have for deciding is if the little performance is actually noticeable. If the gap is small like 5fps then which GPU should I go for? 970 or 290?(or 290x)

 

[rolli59]

It is minimal, here is a CPU intensive game http://www.techspot.com/review/827-watch-dogs-benchmarks/page5.html

 

[ak3mi]

Thank you both will go with the 8350 will decide on gpu in a few days very grateful!