Greatest gaming benefit?

[Pyrophyte]

Hi all,

I've recently been considering doing some hardware upgrade to my existing tower, but I'm wondering if I'll receive a greater benefit from upgrading my graphics card first, or upgrading the CPU and MOBO first while keeping my current graphics card for now? The reason I ask, is for roughly $250 Can, I can choose to either upgrade my Graphics card, or upgrade my CPU and MOBO(Required for CPU update).

Here are the relative specs (I think):

Current Setup
Graphics: ATI Radeon 3870x2
CPU: AMD Phenom 9500 quad core
MOBO: ACER F690GVM

What I would like to eventually fully upgrade to
Graphics: MSI N560GTX-Ti Twn Frozr II 2GD5/OC
CPU: AMD FX8120 Eight Core
MOBO: MSI 970A-G46 AMD 9 Series Motherboard

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to seeing your opinions

 

[rolli59]

For gaming you would be better of with either a Intel I3 or I5 system or even AMD Phenom X4 instead of the FX. I would do the CPU motherboard ram upgrade first!

 

[WR2]

GTX 560 ti GPU upgrade seems to make the most sense to me.

What power supply do you have?

 

[Motopsychojdn]

if you are limited at the moment get the card, mobo and Cpu can come later, and just carry the new card into that
Moto

 

[rolli59]

I think an Acer motherboard and 2.2GHz phenom is not even giving the full potential of the HD3870X2 which is a GTS450 HD4850 performance class GPU.

 

[coper210]

I could go with the CPU and MOBO then after that upgrade to a newer graphics card because if you just upgrade your graphics card first then you are going to get bottle necked

 

[amuffin]

Cpu and mobo!

 

[WR2]

My thinking is getting the graphics card now, skipping Bulldozer
and getting a Piledriver CPU/AM3+MB.

 

[Pyrophyte]

There seems to be a lot of hate on the FX 8 core CPU... I don't understand a whole lot about CPU/MOBO configurations, but I would've thought that an AMD 8 core processor at 3.1GHz would be better than an Intel I5 4 core @ 3.1GHz? Could somebody please explain what I'm missing here? lol

And since a lot of of people don't seem to like the FX series.. Could you also maybe recommend a better CPU/MOBO configuration for gaming around $250 - $300 Canadian?

 

[rolli59]

FX8150 gaming performance 15% better than FX8120 http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested/8

 

[Motopsychojdn]

its not actually eight cores, its four bd modules that act like eight cores, it is actually a quad with a form of hyperthreading,
if you google bulldozer vs 2500k you'll encounter a lot more information on the subject

but under $300Ca
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157315
if you don't overclock then a 2400 would do you and you could upgrade the mobo
Moto

 

[rolli59]

I5 3450 http://www.newegg.ca/Product/ProductCombos.aspx?Item=N82E16819116506&SubCategory=343&SortField=0&PageSize=10&Page=2
H77 motherboard http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130648

 

[Pyrophyte]

Best answer selected by Pyrophyte.

 

[Motopsychojdn]

Thank you for B.a. man, glad to help
Moto