How far until CPU bottleneck? AMD A6-3650

kassuba39

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Nov 27, 2012
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I have a friend who currently has a HP Pavilion p6-2143w desktop PC. He want to upgrade but only has about $300 to work with. Instead of buying a complete new PC, I brought up the idea that he could hold on to his CPU, MOBO, RAM, and HDD, and put that toward a new GPU, PSU, and case.

My question is: How big of a GPU can I get without a bottleneck? For example, would a R9 270X bottleneck the CPU? If so or not, what card would be about the limit? From this knowledge I could probably put the rest of the build together. He is going to be playing DayZ, ArmA II/III, and Rust. Thanks!
 
Solution
Arma II - III is likely to play badly on that system, no matter what. It's poorly optimized.

Mid range graphics, along the lines of an R7 270x or GTX 760 is probably going to get as much out of that CPU as possible, but oversizing the GPU would allow for better performance down the road if the CPU was ever improved.

You're always going to have a bottleneck. Having a GPU that is faster than the CPU is not going to hurt anything.
Arma II - III is likely to play badly on that system, no matter what. It's poorly optimized.

Mid range graphics, along the lines of an R7 270x or GTX 760 is probably going to get as much out of that CPU as possible, but oversizing the GPU would allow for better performance down the road if the CPU was ever improved.

You're always going to have a bottleneck. Having a GPU that is faster than the CPU is not going to hurt anything.
 
Solution


Okay, great! Thanks for the reply. This is what I put together for him.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver Ceramique 2 Tri-Linear 2.7g Thermal Paste ($4.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 270X 2GB TWIN FROZR Video Card ($169.99 @ Newegg)
Case: NZXT Source 220 ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($45.98 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-14 DVD/CD Writer ($12.99 @ Newegg)
Other: 8GB DDR3 1600MHz ($0.00)
Other: AMD A6-3650 ($0.00)
Other: HP Holly AAHD2-HY FM1 ($0.00)
Total: $283.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-06 07:47 EST-0500