How much better is Athlon II X4 631 than A4-3400?

[meij]

I'm using an AMD A4-3400 2.7Ghz (OC'ed to 3.0Ghz) right now and my card is was Radeon HD 6570 (no crossfires). When I play poorly optimized games like Star Wars the Old Republic, even with low resolution of 1024 x 768, my frame rate is still all over the place on lower settings. I wanted to improve that experience by replacing the card with a HD 6850. I tried the game again with HD 6850 and I didn't feel it has improved much, so I thought the A4-3400 is bottlenecking HD 6850. I'm now looking at an Athlon II X4 631 to work with the HD 6850. Will Athlon II X4 631 be much better than A4-3400 and do you think it will still make me feel that HD 6850 is being bottlenecked?

Since I'm using an FM1 socket motherboard, my selection of CPUs are limited. I chose Athlon II X4 631 because it's the cheapest quad core I can find that fits my board, yet still sold in stores. (I don't want to shop online)

 

[WR2]

That X4 631 is a A6-3650 Llano 2.6GHz without it's graphics core active.
So you'd be trading 2 APU cores @ 2.7Ghz for 4 APU cores @ 2.6Ghz.

Depending on the game you could see improvements.
Other games, like StarCraft 2, not all that much difference.

 

[meij]

Ok, so the question becomes is A6-3650 APU a tiny or huge jump from A4-3400, without caring for the integrated graphics? Is trading 2 APU cores @ 2.7Ghz for 4 APU cores @ 2.6 Ghz a tiny or huge upgrade? The game I will be playing is SWTOR. I don't play SC2.

 

[WR2]

SWTOR can make use of the two extra cores.

From THG review: Star Wars: The Old Republic: PC Performance, Benchmarked
CPU Clock And Core Benchmarks

The THG article: Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: March 2012
Gaming CPU Hierarchy Chart shows moving from A4-3400 to Athlon II X4-631 as a two tier upgrade.

 

[nforce4max]

Just go for it and don't look back plus you can overclock much further with the Athlon than with the A4.

 

[WR2]

Look around and see if you get a good price on the Athlon II X4 651 3.0Ghz version.

 

[meij]

Thanks guys, I went for the upgrade and noticed the difference. Although, the game isn't running nearly as smooth as I hoped, but I guess it's just the poorly optimized SWTOR being itself.

 

[meij]

Best answer selected by meij.