Bottle Necking - Time to upgrade, Will my MOBO be OK?

[greens]

Greetings, my computer is showing its age and is in need of upgrade.
I currently have an Asrock 990fx extreme 4. This has a max recommended CPU TDP of 125W 
I have an OEM phenom II x6 in there, stock it is only 2.6ghz 
I have two 6850 in crossfire giving me only 2GB of not GDDR5 
16GB of Mushkin ram that currently sells for 3x the amount I paid for it years ago 
750W PSU still going strong with no whine 

This is supposed to be powering games on 3 monitors in eyefinity...
Lots of my games run great; but I’d like to start getting next gen games as they are coming down in price for summer sales.
I understand that ultrawide will not be doable in most next gen games without dropping mad cash; 1080p is fine.

I got GTAV and it was barely playable at 1080p.
Monitoring my numbers showed my GPUs weren’t maxing themselves out.
Checked my CPU and it was full bore on all cores.
OC’d it to 3.2 which is like a 20% OC and it gave me a dramatic boost in frame rate in GTAV, but still not pretty.

SO, certainly my CPU needs upgrading, however I’m guessing my GPUs will be very, very close to maxing out performance and will get very little life from a new CPU. I like the price to performance on the R9 290, for around 200 bucks it is amazing, and you can find 4gb versions to help out with the Ultrawide resolution, and a single one of those will outperform my crossfire.

I’d like to be as future proof and economical as possible.
There isn’t any chipset beyond the 990fx, however there are better mobos which support the fx 9xxx CPU’s with their 220W TDP.
It seems like a decent chunk of cash for a very lateral move in Mobo… doesn’t feel worth it but advise me if I am wrong.

If I got a a new 6 core vishera CPU, and then a 290, I’d be looking at an upgrade cost of like $400 max; not bad. If that TDP max is just a recommendation I’d be fine with adding a fan and running my 3 year old mobo into the ground with an 8 core. Opinions on that would be great.

My concern is can my mobo handle all that?
Will the Vishera be able to handle a 290? What about down the road when I get another 290 and crossfire them?
That brings up another question; they got rid of the bridge… Does my mobo support crossfire without a bridge? It doesn’t have PCIE3 so that is a concern of mine…

If my mobo won’t last another say, 3 years of hard use, I’d just wait a bit longer and build an entirely new system based on different architecture...

 

[photonboy]

I understand wanting to keep the same MOTHERBOARD, however any AMD CPU you buy is going to be a major bottleneck at times (varies a lot between games).

If it was just replacing the motherboard that would be one thing, but unfortunately it would be Windows as well so going INTEL isn't cheap.

So...

I think an FX-6300 + R9-290 is a reasonably good plan. It's the best you can do for the budget.

*Having said that, I suggest waiting for the 300 series launch. They're not exactly rebadged GPU's as a few features are added but we really need some pricing and reviews to get a better grasp on this.

Other:
If you were building new but still on a budget, I'd tell you to get an i3-4170 (2C/4T) plus a suitable H97 motherboard. And Windows 10 64-bit.

 

[Onus]

Regardless of your "Final Answer," upgrading your graphics card will be a part of it. This means that doing so now, perhaps to a R9 280X or GTX970, is not money wasted (you'll move that to your new system).
You could run a FX-6300 with a mild-moderate OC (make sure you have decent airflow through your case to cool the VRMs) and get a decent boost. The stock cooler won't be sufficient, so choose an alternate one from http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2478892/alternatives-hyper-212-evo-budget-cooling.html for much better bang/buck than the parroted Hyper212 EVO (which isn't bad, but isn't notably better than its cheaper but similar competition). This will ultimately be money flushed though, which looks to be $100 right now (plus cooler, if you don't already have one). Still, $120 or so to get better performance over a 4-6 month period until you rebuild is not a lot of money.

 

[photonboy]

DX12 gaming:
This will make much better use of an FX-6300. It's got six cores (arguably) however DX12 is not only more efficient for processing the code but can also use more threads than DX11 can. Thus most of an FX-6300 can be used in theory. So going forward it should actually be BETTER for a while than it is now.

This still only applies to DX12 games which will take a while to become common but it's worth thinking about if on the fence.

 

[Calculagator]

Waiting could be a good option-there are a lot of interesting things on the horizon. Both Intel's and AMD's next gen CPUs could have significant performance benefits over current offerings at similar prices.

Concerning upgrades, don't bother upgrading your motherboard. Nothing is really built to handle the FX 9xxx series. You can get very similar levels of performance with an FX 8320 and overclocking (which will draw a lot of power). I likewise wouldn't recommend "upgrading" to a 6 core Vishera-it's fairly even in performance with a 3.2 GHz Phenom II x6. it does perform better in GTA V, but both are outperformed by an old Sandy Bridge i5 2500k.

For your GPU, the R9 290 is a decent card at a good price point. It would be a significant upgrade. From what I understand, the new crossfire should be supported with pretty much any recent motherboard that has two or more GPU slots. The better GPU will allow for better resolution at the same frame rate (or close) even if you are experiencing a CPU bottleneck.

 

[greens]

I understand wanting to keep the same MOTHERBOARD, however any AMD CPU you buy is going to be a major bottleneck at times (varies a lot between games)
If it was just replacing the motherboard that would be one thing, but unfortunately it would be Windows as well so going INTEL isn't cheap.
So...
I think an FX-6300 + R9-290 is a reasonably good plan. It's the best you can do for the budget.
*Having said that, I suggest waiting for the 300 series launch. They're not exactly rebadged GPU's as a few features are added but we really need some pricing and reviews to get a better grasp on this.
Other:
If you were building new but still on a budget, I'd tell you to get an i3-4170 (2C/4T) plus a suitable H97 motherboard. And Windows 10 64-bit.

Firstly system builders don't lose their OS regardless of hardware...
Secondly the 300 series did launch, and they don't look that great to be honest given their prices.
Thridly Your i3 recommendation preforms no better than my current CPU...

 

[photonboy]

I understand wanting to keep the same MOTHERBOARD, however any AMD CPU you buy is going to be a major bottleneck at times (varies a lot between games)
If it was just replacing the motherboard that would be one thing, but unfortunately it would be Windows as well so going INTEL isn't cheap.
So...
I think an FX-6300 + R9-290 is a reasonably good plan. It's the best you can do for the budget.
*Having said that, I suggest waiting for the 300 series launch. They're not exactly rebadged GPU's as a few features are added but we really need some pricing and reviews to get a better grasp on this.
Other:
If you were building new but still on a budget, I'd tell you to get an i3-4170 (2C/4T) plus a suitable H97 motherboard. And Windows 10 64-bit.

Firstly system builders don't lose their OS regardless of hardware...
Secondly the 300 series did launch, and they don't look that great to be honest given their prices.
Thridly Your i3 recommendation preforms no better than my current CPU...

1) If your OS is Windows 7 or previous you can't transfer. Windows 8 was supposed to be transferable but then Windows 8.1 came out and is NOT transferable.

Then there's a difference between "OEM" and "System Builder" licensing so it's quite confusing.

2) 300 series did launch yes. I saw an R9-390X for about $100 more (though with more memory) than an R9-290X. So no, not impressed either.

3) i3-4170 no better than your current CPU?
Wrong there. I don't have the link but I saw a lot of games running much better than the FX-8350.

*Anyway, you set a BUDGET for $400. I attempted to give you advice on the best combo of parts which I believe I said was the FX-6300 and R9-290.

Your other options is perhaps dump the money into a good graphics card and upgrade the rest of the CPU, motherboard etc later.

This is NOT the review I was looking for comparing to AMD but it's still useful and you could find the i5 benchmarks and compare those to see how the i3 (i.e. if i3 and i5 were similar, but FX-6300 was 30% slower than i5 then it's slower than i3 by 30%):
http://www.techspot.com/review/972-intel-core-i3-vs-i5-vs-i7/page9.html

"The Core i3 absolutely offers the best value for PC gamers, which is terrific news, though we still recommend a Core i5 to enthusiasts and gamers with a less tight budget."