AMD Athlon II X4 645 Upgrade?

[xyzqwa]

I am thinking of getting myself a GTX 670 and was concerned about any possible bottlenecks. Would I notice a significant bottleneck, and if so what should I upgrade to? On HP's site it tells me my upgrade option. I found a few possessors but I'm not sure they are really cut out for gaming. I need an outside opinion on this please.

Max TDP: 95W
Motherboard supports the following processor upgrades:
NOTE-Only Socket AM3 processors are supported with this motherboard.
AMD Phenom II X6 10xxT Six-Core (Thuban core)
AMD Phenom II X4 9xx/9xxe/8xx Quad-Core (Deneb core)
AMD Phenom II X3 7xx/7xxe Triple-Core (Heka core)
AMD Phenom II X2 5xx (Callisto core)
AMD Athlon X4 6xx/6xxe (Propus)
AMD Athlon X3 4xx/4xxe (Rana)
AMD Athlon X2 2xx/2xxe (Regor)
AMD Sempron Single Core 1xx (Sargas core)

 

[Raidur]

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-7970-cpu-scaling-performance-review/1

Give this a read. 7970 is on par with a GTX 670 and your CPU is included in this review.

You may be somewhat bottlenecked in most games. I think your performance may be suitable, but the GTX 670 is one awesome card and would love some more CPU power backing it.

Being on a HP, likely limiting overclocking, and stuck with 95W CPUs you're really limited to your choices.

You may be forced to try it out and see how your performance is.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113007

This will be your only real upgrade being limited to 95W. Not much of a leap in performance for the price IMO, but it's something.

You may need to look at upgrading your motherboard/CPU (intel?) if you aren't happy with your performance when you get the card.

*shrug

 

[ohyouknow]

What resolution are you playing at? If at 1080p then game happily as the "bottleneck" is negligible.

+1 above as well you aren't going to get leaps and bounds improvement upgrading your cpu since you couldn't overclock your cpu regardless.

If you're playing at lower resolutions just buy a cheaper card like a 6870, 6950, GTX 560 TI, 7850, GTX 570 since your processor would be holding you back then, which would be a shame for a 670

Also, I updated an HP desktop cpu and had horrible issues with the motherboard detecting temps incorrectly with fans speeding up and down all day.

 

[xyzqwa]

My native resolution is 1080p so yes, I am playing in that. Would you recommend we switching over to the new ivy bridges? If so, how would one go around installing a new motherboard. The MoBo is the only thing I don't touch in my computer, so I would most likely just get the Geek Squad to do it. Also, can you guys give me an estimate eon how many frames I will be missing due to my bottleneck.

 

[xyzqwa]

Best answer selected by xyzqwa.

 

[Raidur]

The motherboard isn't very hard to mess with if you're used to other things such as CPU. Just a lot of screws.

Maybe check out a local computer store before Geek Squad. They tend to overcharge on many simple tasks so I hate referring people to Geek Squad.

You could try out the GTX 670 first before upgrading the cpu/mobo and see how your performance is.