Athlon x4 740 Upgrade?

[Kieran Sprouse]

Hi guys, looking for some advice!

So I am not a massive gamer but I enjoy playing games from time to time - I guess you could call me a 'casual gamer'. I don't often buy the newest AAA tittles and often play older games (maybe from like 3-5 years ago or so) and FIFA 17 from time to time.

My PC specs are below which includes an Athlon 740 though I have noticed that the usage is 100% a lot of the time and I think it is bottle-necking my GPU. Not sure if it is okay for it to run at 100% all the time (boost is enabled and it does have a decent aftermarket CPU Fan) but didn't want it to burn out and fry. I wondered potentially about a small upgrade.

I don't have/want to spend much money so don't fancy changing my motherboard if I can help it so wondered if upgrading to a 760K would make any difference?

If not, what would be the best course of action - upgrading to a FM2+/AM3+ board and a used CPU?

Unfortunately by board is FM2 only so I couldn't just whack a 860k in there, I would have to get another board.


Specs are:

-AMD Athlon x4 740
-AsRock FM2A55M-DGS
-Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB DDR3 - 1600MHz
-Nvidia GTX 580


Cheers,

Kieran

 

[Wayfall]

Well the most powerful CPU you can stick in that motherboard is an A10 CPU.

I use to have a Athlon x4 750K back in 2014, i went to Haswell after that build. Now in 2017 i have a i7 6800K Broadwell CPU.

 

[Kieran Sprouse]

Hi Wayfall, thanks for your response - while it is true about the A10, I see no point going with an APU as I already have a GTX 580 so may as well get a dedicated CPU.


Kieran

 

[Wayfall]

Well my brother has an APU in his system (can't recall which one) he may have a A10, dunno, he has a Gigabyte GTX 960 (the small single fan version) and he is totally happy playing old singleplayer games such as Skyrim, Thief, Fallout 3/New Vegas and Wolfenstein New Order/Old Blood on high settings 60fps 1080p. He even plays ye oldey Minecraft some times.

An Apu is cheap while leaping over to Haswell or any other chipset is pricey, i'm just seeing if you'd rather stay on that board for now.

My old 750K use to struggle with many open world games and multiplayer games as even thou it had the cores it had very old cpu architecture while all these new programs and games were for builds with the newest parts. It was a simple £250-300 budget pc so it did okay.

Also you will only see like what 10-15% increase in performance if you bough the 760K and i don't think your even going to overclock thou its not even worth it to. It's a £30-40 CPU, it ain't going to be that powerful.

All you can do is get the A10 or stick it out for a few months and get a new build. And as you seem to be a person who just wants A working pc i'd recommend you just get a prebuilt one from a respectable pc builder. If you look online you'd be surprised how many independent pc stores are out there that can put together and test a pc for you then send it off to you for pretty good price compared to the big companies. Just watch out for cheap psu's in builds.

 

[Obakasama]

http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/FM2A55M-DGS/#CPU

Conveniently I had an x4 760k for quite a few years. It does okay for most older games. Judging by the list it seems to be the most powerful CPU you could get for that motherboard too. Problem is, there doesn't seem to be enough of a difference to justify the upgrade.

Wayfall has covered the aspect of changing platform. If it's something you're seriously considering it feels difficult to recommend FM2+ or AM3+ at this point, though it does depend how much you can afford to spend.

 

[Wayfall]

Okay i think what would easier then if you could list what you want out of a computer.

For example:
-What games are you aiming to play?
-How fast do you want your pc?
-Do you want to be able to have multiple applications/tabs up at once?
-What is your budget?
-Do you need more storage?

This should help us branch off with your question and get the right answer for you.

 

[Kieran Sprouse]

Hi both,

Thanks for your answers thus far, appreciated.

I was really looking for anyone who has experiences with the 760k and whether it was worth spending £30 or so for a slightly better CPU that didn't just sit at 100% the whole time and bottleneck the GTX 580.

It would be possible to upgrade, though I would only be looking at this stage to upgrade CPU, Motherboard (and maybe RAM).

I want to play a few (I mean a few) newer titles but mainly ones between 2008-2015 if I am honest as I am not the most avid gamer out there.

I have a 128GB SSD and a 1TB WD HDD which is totally fine for me and I bought a new case recently too so don't think there is much point getting a whole new build. I am very comfortable building it myself too as I have built quite a few systems before.

My budget is probably like £150 tops for a CPU and motherboard (if I can keep DDR3 RAM that would be good, otherwise I will have to wait it out a few more months and buy 8GB DDR4 though that is still quite expensive). I wouldn't need to upgrade my GPU at this stage as it is powerful enough for what I want to use the PC for - much more powerful and I think it would be slightly overkill.

Also don't want to get components that will immediately bottleneck the GTX 580 either...


Cheers,

Kieran

 

[Finstar]

To get any kind of meaningful performance boost, you'd need to get a new mobo with a new cpu and even possibly new ram.

 

[Obakasama]

Whether the x4 760k will bottleneck will depend what you're doing. (True of any CPU really.) As I mentioned I had mine paired with a GTX 750 ti for... three/four years.

I think Dragon Age: Inquisition is the most demanding game I had in my library and it ran it okay. No consistent 60fps but usually above 30fps on 1080p. Even tried the Tomb Raider reboot and it seemed adequate (didn't get very far though as I've barely played it). It ran fine for Skyrim with no major issues. But for games poorly optimised and dependent on good IPC, then it will struggle. Dead or Alive 5 Last Round often had slowdowns for me because it is single threaded (had there been a way to lock to 30fps it would have been mostly fine). I went low on most settings. Typically, it was possible to lower the resolution to increase framerates.

Overclocking, if your motherboard can handle it, will also give you a bit of a performance boost in some games (sometimes a rare 10fps difference in Inquisition for me). But that's the extent of my experience with my old PC. Not sure how much help that is (better if I had played the games you've played to make a fairer comparison). It's also managing expectations.

But the margin of improvement from an x4 740 still seems difficult to justify the expenditure. I would suggest trying a lower resolution to see if you find it acceptable as a compromise before spending money.