Fallout 4 Requirements

[MatreyuC]

Currently in my computer is a fairly ancient Dell Inspiron 531 motherboard with an AMD Athlon 64 dual 5000+, and 2gb of DDR2 ram. My graphics card is a Powercolor Radeon HD 6670, specifically the one with 1gb of DDR3 ram. Obviously this setup will not run Fallout 4 in a satisfactory manner, if at all. I am wondering as to whether I should upgrade the GPU, or everything else instead. Which would get me better performance, in any game? I've narrowed down the parts that I want, for a GPU I would get a GTX 970, or for everything else I would get an AMD FX 6300, an ASRock 970 Extreme 3 R2.0, and 8 gigabytes of DDR3 ram. Other things to note: I have Windows 10 64 bit, and the power supply that came in my Dell is I believe 120 watts. Would I need a new power supply even if I didn't get the GTX 970?

 

[thor220]

Your whole build is going to need an update but the CPU is most in need. Bethesda games are notoriously CPU hungry and the new fallout game is going to be no exception. Intel is going to be a better choice in this case. Fallout 3 and skyrim only used 2 cores and thus really heavily on single core performance. If you have to go AMD, the AMD Athlon x4 860k is going to give you the best performance on the AMD size, but you have to buy an aftermarket cooler and overclock.

 

[AC1D911]

Currently in my computer is a fairly ancient Dell Inspiron 531 motherboard with an AMD Athlon 64 dual 5000+, and 2gb of DDR2 ram. My graphics card is a Powercolor Radeon HD 6670, specifically the one with 1gb of DDR3 ram. Obviously this setup will not run Fallout 4 in a satisfactory manner, if at all. I am wondering as to whether I should upgrade the GPU, or everything else instead. Which would get me better performance, in any game? I've narrowed down the parts that I want, for a GPU I would get a GTX 970, or for everything else I would get an AMD FX 6300, an ASRock 970 Extreme 3 R2.0, and 8 gigabytes of DDR3 ram. Other things to note: I have Windows 10 64 bit, and the power supply that came in my Dell is I believe 120 watts. Would I need a new power supply even if I didn't get the GTX 970?

oh my lawd, your build needs a whole new update. Thats a great budget build that i highly reccomend but you need a new psu.

 

[MatreyuC]

Your whole build is going to need an update but the CPU is most in need. Bethesda games are notoriously CPU hungry and the new fallout game is going to be no exception. Intel is going to be a better choice in this case. Fallout 3 and skyrim only used 2 cores and thus really heavily on single core performance. If you have to go AMD, the AMD Athlon x4 860k is going to give you the best performance on the AMD size, but you have to buy an aftermarket cooler and overclock.

So should I go for the Athlon X4 860k or a Pentium G3258? In solely single or dual threaded games I'm pretty sure the Pentium wins out, but I worry about games that use 3 or 4 threads stuttering on it. Would it be worth it for the Athlon which may not be quite so single threadedly strong, but doesn't dip fps for more thread hungry games?

 

[DrDanPhD]

Most games are not yet fully optimized for more than two cores, though that is likely to change in the coming months.

My recommendation would be the G3258. It's a capable little performer, but more importantly it also makes use of the same socket as the more powerful 4xxx series chips. If you do need power at a later date, slotting one of those in will save you the cost of a motherboard upgrade in addition.

I would also echo the statement of a PSU upgrade. A pre-supplied PSU is suspect in any situation, but one with such a low rating will cause issues across the board.

If you don't mind me asking, have you a budget set aside for the upgrade at all? If so, would it stretch to such a complete system upgrade?

 

[MatreyuC]

Most games are not yet fully optimized for more than two cores, though that is likely to change in the coming months.

My recommendation would be the G3258. It's a capable little performer, but more importantly it also makes use of the same socket as the more powerful 4xxx series chips. If you do need power at a later date, slotting one of those in will save you the cost of a motherboard upgrade in addition.

I would also echo the statement of a PSU upgrade. A pre-supplied PSU is suspect in any situation, but one with such a low rating will cause issues across the board.

If you don't mind me asking, have you a budget set aside for the upgrade at all? If so, would it stretch to such a complete system upgrade?

 

[MatreyuC]

My budget is whatever I can get my friend to spend on me, so as low as possible within reason. I may get a GPU for Christmas, and if I do it will almost certainly be a GTX 970. The upgradeability is also a concern for me, so I guess I will go with the Pentium because it wins in 2 out of three categories. Now for a motherboard. I'm looking right now, but have you any suggestions? My only criteria are that it isn't more, or at least much more than the CPU, and that it can overclock.

 

[AC1D911]

My budget is whatever I can get my friend to spend on me, so as low as possible within reason. I may get a GPU for Christmas, and if I do it will almost certainly be a GTX 970. The upgradeability is also a concern for me, so I guess I will go with the Pentium because it wins in 2 out of three categories. Now for a motherboard. I'm looking right now, but have you any suggestions? My only criteria are that it isn't more, or at least much more than the CPU, and that it can overclock.

Go with an r9 390, not a gtx 970. The 390 beats it in every way, except drivers but it probably will by Christmas.

 

[Archgaull]

You keep saying GTX 970, so I'm assuming that your budget is somewhere around $300-$315 USD. In that case, this is an option for at least getting the CPU, RAM, and PSU up to date.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($166.95 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($41.40 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($42.30 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($50.40 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $301.05
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-09-04 04:02 EDT-0400

 

[MatreyuC]

How about this:
CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 $70
RAM: 8gb (2x4gb) HyperX Fury 1333mhz $45
MOBO: Open Box GIGABYTE GA-H81M-DS2V (rev. 1.0) $37
PSU: EVGA 100-W1-500-KR 500W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified $40

Sound good? Anything anyone would recommend instead? I really need to keep the price down, I do not in fact have a budget of $300 currently.

 

[MatreyuC]

Would that motherboard be able to take advantage of the Pentium's massive overclocking potential?

 

[thor220]

How about this:
CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 $70
RAM: 8gb (2x4gb) HyperX Fury 1333mhz $45
MOBO: Open Box GIGABYTE GA-H81M-DS2V (rev. 1.0) $37
PSU: EVGA 100-W1-500-KR 500W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified $40

Sound good? Anything anyone would recommend instead? I really need to keep the price down, I do not in fact have a budget of $300 currently.

You should be able to coax enough OC performance out of that motherboard. Not point on spending big cash on a better OC board when you are working with a value processor. The advantage of the build you have laid out is that you can always upgrade to an i5 or i7 later without having to buy a new motherboard.