Cpu upgrade or overclock help

[mrteamtactical]

Hey guys so here's my problem. Playing gaming such as GTA 5 I've noticed that my CPU is bottle necking my GPU. CPU usage is around 80-100% in the city where as my GPU is around 20-30%. My specs are
Amd fx 4300 at standard speed
xfx 7870 2gb
8gb corsair vengeance
cx 600w corsair psu.
Im wondering if overclocking will do much as this CPU is at 3.8ghz at its standard speed, and with the price it would cost to get a CPU cooler i could probably sell my 4300 and get a 6 or maybe even 8 core am3+ cpu such as the fx 6300 or fx 8350. Just wanted to hear some opinions of others as to what i should do. Thanks anyway. Matt

 

[utgotye]

What are you using for cooling? For the little to nothing you can get an Evo or for a bit more you could get a 120mm water cooler. For AMD especially, I'd recommend the latter, if only for the noise aspect.

Realistically, the upgraded CPU might not make a great difference if the cores aren't being used. Quad core utilization, at least for games, is still in realtive infancy so you can bet than more than that is iffy at best.

IMO, overclock and see what your temps, power utilization and noise levels are and decide if they are acceptable to you. If they are, determine if the overclock has made any difference in your gaming performance.

If possible, avoid any major upgrades or new builds as new CPUs and chipsets are on the horizon.

 

[Dunkan77]

Hello,

I'm sorry id this answer is a bit late but here it is anyway. Your CPU doesn't seem to be needing an upgrade and as the previous answer states, new CPU's are just next door and I would wait to get a new one if you really should. If you are running the stock cooler, make sure that it isn't throttling, that is turning down its own speed to protect itself form being burned and damaged by excessive temperatures. one way to do this is simply by looking at the normal speeds it runs at then looking at the speeds while playing.

If it does throttle, get yourself a CM Hyper 212 EVO or a Corsair H80i GT if you want water cooling for better noise levels and temperatures but this water cooler does cost around 80$. Then you can try overclocking it as this CPU has an unlocked multiplier and I am sure you will get better results when gaming.

I hope this helped and if you have any more questions, do feel free to ask them and I will try to answer them as well as possible. 😀