Major Upgrades to Gaming PC, need advice!

[bmac93]

So here is my current build.
CPU: FX-8350 (not OC) prefer not to.
GPU: MSI 970
Mobo: Gigabyte 990fx
RAM: G.Skill 8gb DDR3 1600

I am contemplating upgrading the CPU, Mobo, and RAM. But i am not entirely sold that its worth the amount of $.

I am consdering the i5-6600k or 4790k (depending on sale price, yes i am aware that i will need a different mobo and wont need new RAM for the 4790k)

Is it more worth it to make the jump to 6600k or get the 4790k? I have read the differnece between DDR3 and DDR4 is minimal. Any advice is appreciated!

 

[Seamz]

It's not worth the money for your build. Although AMD v Intel tends to favor Intel you have one of the better AMD CPU's and the performance gains by switching won't be significant enough to justify dumping 3-500$ on upgrades. It would make the most sense to let your 8350 go to EOL and then upgrade. Maybe in 18 months or so.

 

[Chicken-Select]

It's not worth the money for your build. Although AMD v Intel tends to favor Intel you have one of the better AMD CPU's and the performance gains by switching won't be significant enough to justify dumping 3-500$ on upgrades. It would make the most sense to let your 8350 go to EOL and then upgrade. Maybe in 18 months or so.

Have to agree with Seamz here unless you're extremely inpatient. Maybe wait and see what black friday/cyber monday has to offer perhaps you can find a nice deal. Other than that I think the i7 4790k beats the skylake i5 6500k. The motherboards and RAM for LGA1150 are also way cheaper. I doubt you'll see INSANE performance gains but I think it'll be a nice bump especially if the games like single core performance rather than more cores, which most games do.

 

[why_wolf]

There's not a massive difference in total power between those two. So its not like you'll be some weak nobody if you get the 4790K. It sounds like you would prefer to spend less money so I would just go with whatever is cheapest.

Though going with the DDR4 now means in another future builds you can just reuse the DDR4 as all RAM is going to transition over to DDR4 over the next few years since its the new hot thing.

 

[Lazerbacon]

I actually was having the same exact issue about a week ago whether or not I should by the 6600k or the 4790k. Basically what I got was that while the difference between DDR3 and DDR4 is minimal, the difference between 5th and 6th gen intel processors is not. Also if intel decides to re-use the 1151 socket for the 7th gen processors you wont have to buy a new mobo. The difference between a 6600k and your current cpu would be massive, so I think it is definitely worth the $ especially because the intel processor will take advantage of your 970 a lot better.

 

[Frankenstein002]

Not worth it.. dnt waste money, save it and buy a better gpu... will benefit for gaming... Aftr 8350 dies build a entirely new system from scratch...
upgrading now wil definately show some good improvement but using 8350 for another 1-2 years and then building a new rig with latest i7 seems to b a bettr option to me...
and who knows, we might see a 6 core cpu from intel at the cost of current 4 core i7 6700k. Since intel announced broadwell-e cpus with upto 10 cores, we can expect to see a 6 core cpu for consumer class too. And there is upcoming amd zen fx cpus to with skylake like performance...
gud luck...

 

[capt_taco]

It's definitely not worth the $400-$500 to replace them. You won't see a significant enough performance gain from the CPU to be worth it, and you will see no gain at all from the RAM.

In fact, most DDR4 is actually slightly SLOWER than high-end or even mid-high DDR3. When they lowered the voltage, it increased the latency so much that it wiped out all the performance gains from higher clock speeds. (I'm running a Skylake build with DDR3 for that very reason)

Basically, the 6600k and 4790k are better processors than the FX-8350, but not $400 better. And the FX-8350 is enough that it ought to handle most games fine, unless they're particularly CPU-intensive. Unless you're unhappy with your performance right now, it's not worth the money.

As for overclocking ... that's basically what you do with an FX processor; they are very good for it. And personally, if the alternative is to throw away the CPU and motherboard and buy a new one, it's a no-brainer to first try overclocking and see what you get. What do you have to lose?

 

[capt_taco]

Not worth it.. dnt waste money, save it and buy a better gpu... will benefit for gaming... Aftr 8350 dies build a entirely new system from scratch...
upgrading now wil definately show some good improvement but using 8350 for another 1-2 years and then building a new rig with latest i7 seems to b a bettr option to me...
and who knows, we might see a 6 core cpu from intel at the cost of current 4 core i7 6700k. Since intel announced broadwell-e cpus with upto 10 cores, we can expect to see a 6 core cpu for consumer class too. And there is upcoming amd zen fx cpus to with skylake like performance...
gud luck...

While I agree with that overall, I don't think a new GPU paired with the existing CPU is the answer either ... THAT will make the CPU into a bottleneck. The 970 is still a pretty great card for 99% of gaming uses.

Intel may come out with mainstream 6-core or 8-core CPUs before too long, but I don't expect it will matter for gaming, since they tend to develop games with the lowest common denominator in mind. Right now, a quad-core is the standard and a dual-core is the minimum for low-budget systems, so most will optimize the games for two cores, maybe have some things that CAN take advantage of four.

But if mainstream six-core CPUs became a thing tomorrow, figure it would take about 5 years for everyone to start using them, and then after THAT game companies would start to consider optimizing for them. Quad-core is still going to be it for the foreseeable future.

 

[Frankenstein002]

I think u r 4getting bout assassin's creed unity, gta 5, fallout 4 which easily use 4 cores and that too still on directx 11, from next year we'l begin to see directx 12 game titles which utilizes multiple cpu cores far more effectively...