Is it reasonable to upgrade a stock Phenom II 1090T for gaming?

[Zachnorn]

So my 1090T is getting older and so I'm wondering if it's time to upgrade it. Overclocking it doesn't work right as the motherboard it came with isn't very good (I can only get to about 3.5 GHz stable). From my understanding, it's not that much weaker than some AMD CPUs I could upgrade to, such as the 8320 and 8350 (as I don't have an AM3+ motherboard, I'd need a new motherboard for any new AMD CPU. I've asked before (on another message board) and the general response was to go with Intel when it comes to upgrading.

All I'd need is the CPU and motherboard. For something like an Intel Core i5-4690k with an ASUS Z87 motherboard, I'd be spending about $365 on a CPU upgrade.

I mainly do gaming. The only game I'm really concerned about is GTA V as my CPU does not meet the recommended requirements. I may do things like work with video and run a Minecraft server.

So my question is, is it worth $365+ to upgrade to an i5-4690k or will I be fine with my CPU for a while still?

My specs (which I feel are relevant, let me know if you need more information):
AMD 1090T (stock 3.2 GHz)
8 GB DDR3
AMD 7870 2 GB
550w Corsair PSU

Thanks!

 

[herpaderpMan]

if i were you and that money is not EXTREMELY important, then yes. go for the upgrade !

 

[Creme]

Actually, in more recent games, there has been a bigger disparity between the Phenoms and the FXs, with the latter perfoming better. A FX-8350 would be a nice upgrade for multithreaded apps like video and you'll probably see a difference in games, if nothing else because of the higher clock. You wouldn't have to change your motherboard most likely with this CPU.

 

[Zachnorn]

Actually, in more recent games, there has been a bigger disparity between the Phenoms and the FXs, with the latter perfoming better. A FX-8350 would be a nice upgrade for multithreaded apps like video and you'll probably see a difference in games, if nothing else because of the higher clock. You wouldn't have to change your motherboard most likely with this CPU.

Thanks. Would you happen to know if this is the case with the ASUS M4A77T/USB3? I checked on Google and I didn't see anything useful (in English, anyway).

 

[Xibyth]

For games like GTA V your GPU is the real choke point here. A new CPU might give you a notable 5 FPS boost, but not really worth spending a few hundred on. Check out the GTX 960, the issue with older cards on modern games is their memory was never really fast enough to provide information to the GPU without wider memory buses. I could go into the details about how this affects performance, but just note you would get a significant boost in framerates, and be able to hold solid at 1080p.

 

[Zachnorn]

For games like GTA V your GPU is the real choke point here. A new CPU might give you a notable 5 FPS boost, but not really worth spending a few hundred on. Check out the GTX 960, the issue with older cards on modern games is their memory was never really fast enough to provide information to the GPU without wider memory buses. I could go into the details about how this affects performance, but just note you would get a significant boost in framerates, and be able to hold solid at 1080p.

Obviously, GTA V isn't out yet so nobody really knows how it would run on my hardware. But from other games, how much of a performance gain should I expect from upgrading my video card? Currently, I do notice that my GPU usage in most games is only up to about 80%, so I wonder if there's any bottlenecking going on as it is (I know that's a dirty term these days, but still).

 

[Xibyth]

For games like GTA V your GPU is the real choke point here. A new CPU might give you a notable 5 FPS boost, but not really worth spending a few hundred on. Check out the GTX 960, the issue with older cards on modern games is their memory was never really fast enough to provide information to the GPU without wider memory buses. I could go into the details about how this affects performance, but just note you would get a significant boost in framerates, and be able to hold solid at 1080p.

Obviously, GTA V isn't out yet so nobody really knows how it would run on my hardware. But from other games, how much of a performance gain should I expect from upgrading my video card? Currently, I do notice that my GPU usage in most games is only up to about 80%, so I wonder if there's any bottlenecking going on as it is (I know that's a dirty term these days, but still).

It's not a dirty term because it's real. It it's true there are many gains to newer Intel sockets as AMD has not improved the FX chipset in a long time. PCIE 3.0 has some gains in performance and as always each generation of CPUs is more efficient and works about 10% faster. But on games limited to 4 cores upgrading to an 8 or 6 core AMD will only offer better performance in games if the cores have higher frequency.

 

[Xibyth]

And the 960 would offer between 25% to 45% better performance depending on whether the game is AMD or Nvidia centric.

 

[Zachnorn]

For games like GTA V your GPU is the real choke point here. A new CPU might give you a notable 5 FPS boost, but not really worth spending a few hundred on. Check out the GTX 960, the issue with older cards on modern games is their memory was never really fast enough to provide information to the GPU without wider memory buses. I could go into the details about how this affects performance, but just note you would get a significant boost in framerates, and be able to hold solid at 1080p.

Obviously, GTA V isn't out yet so nobody really knows how it would run on my hardware. But from other games, how much of a performance gain should I expect from upgrading my video card? Currently, I do notice that my GPU usage in most games is only up to about 80%, so I wonder if there's any bottlenecking going on as it is (I know that's a dirty term these days, but still).

It's not a dirty term because it's real. It it's true there are many gains to newer Intel sockets as AMD has not improved the FX chipset in a long time. PCIE 3.0 has some gains in performance and as always each generation of CPUs is more efficient and works about 10% faster. But on games limited to 4 cores upgrading to an 8 or 6 core AMD will only offer better performance in games if the cores have higher frequency.

Thanks. So based off of this, I should be good with my CPU for another year or two, I assume. From what I've read in this topic and elsewhere, it seems like my best option might be to just worry about my video card until Skylake or its successor come out. Am I right in assuming that?

 

[Xibyth]

For games like GTA V your GPU is the real choke point here. A new CPU might give you a notable 5 FPS boost, but not really worth spending a few hundred on. Check out the GTX 960, the issue with older cards on modern games is their memory was never really fast enough to provide information to the GPU without wider memory buses. I could go into the details about how this affects performance, but just note you would get a significant boost in framerates, and be able to hold solid at 1080p.

Obviously, GTA V isn't out yet so nobody really knows how it would run on my hardware. But from other games, how much of a performance gain should I expect from upgrading my video card? Currently, I do notice that my GPU usage in most games is only up to about 80%, so I wonder if there's any bottlenecking going on as it is (I know that's a dirty term these days, but still).

It's not a dirty term because it's real. It it's true there are many gains to newer Intel sockets as AMD has not improved the FX chipset in a long time. PCIE 3.0 has some gains in performance and as always each generation of CPUs is more efficient and works about 10% faster. But on games limited to 4 cores upgrading to an 8 or 6 core AMD will only offer better performance in games if the cores have higher frequency.

Thanks. So based off of this, I should be good with my CPU for another year or two, I assume. From what I've read in this topic and elsewhere, it seems like my best option might be to just worry about my video card until Skylake or its successor come out. Am I right in assuming that?

Yes. In another year or two your GPU upgrade will still be up to snuff with the newer games. Besides that we will be seeing a great many enchancments to motherboard archrtecture. So long as your running a quad core now it will tie you over until that time.

 

[Zachnorn]

That works, then. Thanks for your help!