New CPU, Current bottlenecks my GPU

[Sem Abraham]

I'm looking for a new CPU, I recently switched my R7 260X for an R9 390. However I've noticed my GPU never reaches full potential during games. It's usually stuck around 900MHz.

My current APU is the A8-6600K and I'm looking to upgrade around June/July 2016. My PC will mainly be used for games like Space Engineers, Cities: Skylines. But also video editing en processing.

Should I save up for a Skylake i7, i5. Or wait for the AMD's Zen to come out, seeing I won't purchase anything untill Summer. (Zen comes a little after I believe.)

 

[DonkeyOatie]

There's no real answer to your question.

There's nothing for the socket you have that I would recommend. The Athlon 860K is as good as it gets, and it is an improvement, but not enough.

Skylake or Haswell will certainly do the business with even an i5.

Zen??? I expect something approaching Haswell capability, with technical advantages is some particular area (no clue what)

Reality changes quite quickly, so I'd be waiting and watching. What will you need to replace apart form CPU, and motherboard? CPU cooler? RAM? What's your PSU?

 

[CountMike]

It's always thankless task to predict future in IT. Some things drop from the blue when you're not watching and other are pure disappointment when they show up after lengthy development and hype about it. Witness AMD and "Bulldozer" architecture, only when Vishera came out it got somewhat rectified. Similar thing happened with Intel and Skylake, great hype and than everybody found out that older models are just as capable.
If you are planing for upgrade at certain date, start saving now for worst (most expensive) case scenario and when you get there, decide than.

 

[Sem Abraham]

There's no real answer to your question.

There's nothing for the socket you have that I would recommend. The Athlon 860K is as good as it gets, and it is an improvement, but not enough.

Skylake or Haswell will certainly do the business with even an i5.

Zen??? I expect something approaching Haswell capability, with technical advantages is some particular area (no clue what)

Reality changes quite quickly, so I'd be waiting and watching. What will you need to replace apart form CPU, and motherboard? CPU cooler? RAM? What's your PSU?

So I didn't clarify my original post enough, I'm also replacing my motherboard. However the new motherboard I'm getting purely depends on my CPU choice.

My current psu is 700W cooler master.
I have 2 sticks of 4GB DDR3 memory
My mother board is the Asus A88XM-A Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard.
My CPU cooler is the Deepcool NEPTWIN.

I'm not sure if my current CPU cooler will fit on any skylake chip/motherboard, haven't looked into that.
I'm not looking to upgrade my RAM, but if I'm going Skylake I'll need DDR4 anyway I believe..

It's always thankless task to predict future in IT. Some things drop from the blue when you're not watching and other are pure disappointment when they show up after lengthy development and hype about it. Witness AMD and "Bulldozer" architecture, only when Vishera came out it got somewhat rectified. Similar thing happened with Intel and Skylake, great hype and than everybody found out that older models are just as capable.
If you are planing for upgrade at certain date, start saving now for worst (most expensive) case scenario and when you get there, decide than.

Hmm. I'll be expecting the costs to be around €600,- take or leave some. But yeah saving up is the best. I'm just trying to get as much information on the topic before buying an item that I might regret getting 😛

 

[DonkeyOatie]

I understood that you were ready to change your motherboard, but wanted to make clear what the best possible was with your existing socket (which still might mean a motherboard change) I was looking at all options that might work with your 390.

Some Skylake boards will support DDR3 and many coolers can fit both AMD and Intel sockets.

Watch, wait, and save, and ask the question again, a month before you are ready to buy.