CPU upgrade for gaming

[Jchinson]

So I need some CPU advice. Currently I have an fx8320e non overclocked. I have stock cooler. It bottlenecks my 1060 a good bit, and stutters in games. So I have a few questions:
Can I mild OC on the stock cooler.
And on updrades: I use xplane 10, a flight simulator. The 8320e bottleneck said my 1060 and on normal/medium settings, I'm only getting 30fps. Would an i3-6100 provide any better performance in other CPU intensive games? Or would the i5-6400 be the better option?

 

[rubervaldo66]

The i5 is an amazing CPU and should end all your bottlenecking problems, specially if you are going for anything higher than 1080p. The only problem is that if you change your CPU, you will have to buy new RAM and a new MOBO... it can get expensive. About overclocking on a stock cooler, you can do it, but unless your case is really cold(nice fans, air conditioners in the room, etc) you won't get too far.

 

[atljsf]

i would get a i5 or a ryzen 1700 and avoid intel, i3 is quite decent, but is a 2 cores cpu, you have there a 8 cores, slow but 8 cores

the riyzen next week will give you 8 cores and 16 threads, making the i3 vanish

the price gap is what affects you here, the ryzen 1700 is at 330 dollars now, the i3 is around 130 but those two are not even close

 

[chemmajorp53]

Yes, the i3 will provide better performance in CPU intensive games that aren't heavily multi-threaded. The i5 6400 is always a better than the i3 6100, it just costs more. Whether it's worth it is up to you, I'd look up some benchmarks for that game to see how much performance you'd actually be getting. I wouldn't recommend overclocking on the stock cooler, it's made to dissipate only the heat that the CPU puts out at stock as cheaply as possible. Also I'd recommend reading this thread, it might be better to just change some in game settings than change your hardware.

http://forums.x-pilot.com/forums/topic/8237-x-plane-performance-and-bottlenecks/

 

[Jchinson]

The i5 is an amazing CPU and should end all your bottlenecking problems, specially if you are going for anything higher than 1080p. The only problem is that if you change your CPU, you will have to buy new RAM and a new MOBO... it can get expensive. About overclocking on a stock cooler, you can do it, but unless your case is really cold(nice fans, air conditioners in the room, etc) you won't get too far.

I have 3 corsair AF 120, if that's good.

 

[rubervaldo66]

The i5 is an amazing CPU and should end all your bottlenecking problems, specially if you are going for anything higher than 1080p. The only problem is that if you change your CPU, you will have to buy new RAM and a new MOBO... it can get expensive. About overclocking on a stock cooler, you can do it, but unless your case is really cold(nice fans, air conditioners in the room, etc) you won't get too far.

I have 3 corsair AF 120, if that's good.

You can go for it, then. I wouldn't expect a brand new performance, but it will definitely help in the short term, specially if you don't plan on buying new parts.

 

[chemmajorp53]

What does "a brand new performance" even mean? He probably won't notice any changes whatsoever, i mean realistically is 21 fps as opposed to 20 fps as a minimum with a 100 or 200MHz boost really the solution to this problem? Case fans matter far far less for CPU temp than the surface area of your heatsink does. You can have a 20in space fan blowing directly on a stock cooler in open air and it still won't perform nearly as well as a hyper 212 evo with 1 case fan. I think you're missing the point here ruber to be honest. It's almost certainly being caused by in game graphics settings.

 

[rubervaldo66]

What does "a brand new performance" even mean? He probably won't notice any changes whatsoever, i mean realistically is 21 fps as opposed to 20 fps as a minimum with a 100 or 200MHz boost really the solution to this problem? Case fans matter far far less for CPU temp than the surface area of your heatsink does. You can have a 20in space fan blowing directly on a stock cooler in open air and it still won't perform nearly as well as a hyper 212 evo with 1 case fan. I think you're missing the point here ruber to be honest. It's almost certainly being caused by in game graphics settings.

I don't know where OP lives or how much he wants to buy a new CPU, so I answered assuming that he doesn't want to buy one. That's why I'm saying he should at least try overclocking before anything. Everybody knows that an aftermarket cooler can outperform any stock+case fans by a huge margin, but, again, I tried to make him not spend his money.

 

[geofelt]

To answer your question:

You need a better than average motherboard to overclock a FX-8xxx as well as a better than stock cooler.
What is your motherboard.

Other cpu options will depend on how well threaded your games are.
Typically, sims as well as strategy and mmo games depend on the performance of a single master thread. Unfortunately, FX cores are weak.

Here are some tests to give you some insight on this:
Limit your cpu, either by reducing the OC, or, in windows power management, limit the maximum cpu% to something like 70%.
Go to control panel/power options/change plan settings/change advanced power settings/processor power management/maximum processor state/
This will simulate what a lack of cpu power will do.
Conversely what a 30% improvement in core speed might do.

You should also experiment with removing one or more cores. You can do this in the windows msconfig boot advanced options option.
You will need to reboot for the change to take effect. Set the number of processors to less than you have.
This will tell you how sensitive your games are to the benefits of many threads.
If you see little difference, your game does not need all the threads you have.

Intel cores are some 35% faster per clock than FX.
My guess is that a I3-6100@3.7 with a better single thread rating would do you some good.
The I5-6400@2.7 not so much; likely a sideways move.

If you will change out your cpu and the requisite motherboard, go with latest 7th gen.

I3-7100@3.9 would cost no more.
Your absolute best would be a I5-7600K with an overclock.
As of 1/13/17
What percent of samples can get an overclock
at a vcore around 1.4v.
I5-7600K
5.1 28%
5.0 52%
4.9 72%

Ryzen official benchmarks are not out yet.
The suggested 52% IPC improvements might make such a chip worthwhile if true, but it will come and a higher budget than you are suggesting.