PC upgrade - GPU or CPU?

[ProgamerIV]

Planning to upgrade my PC, but I don't have money for a new motherboard + cpu and a new gpu at once. My current rig:
-ASRock 980DE3/u3S3 motherboard
-AMD FX-8350 cpu w/ cm hyper 212 evo cooler
-8gb ddr3 1600mhz
-XFX R9-280X 3GB GDDR5

I could afford a 6gb GTX 1060, but I don't know whether it would cause a bottleneck. Is the FX-8350 good enough for it? Since there is no real upgrade within the AM3 platform, upgrading the CPU would also require a new motherboard.

So is the 1060 alright with the 8350 or do I need an i5 or i7?

 

[Rookie_MIB]

I would go for a new GPU. GPU tech has advanced quite a bit in the past year, with the GPUs becoming quite a bit faster while cutting down a whole lot on power usage. The 8350 is still a relevant GPU for gaming - it has a fair bit of oomph. Beside, wait for Zen if you're an AMD fan...

 

[Dunlop0078]

It may bottleneck the 1060 slighly in some cpu heavy titles, but a small bottleneck is not the end of the world assuming that 8350 is working optimally in that board. That motherboard has an older chipset and only a 4+1 VRM design with no heatsink, I have heard about boards like that throttling 125watt TDP chips like that 8350. Asrock even puts a asterisk next to that cpu in their support list for that board saying they recommend you have a cooler with a fan that blows air down onto the motherboard. Are you sure you are getting full clock speed on all cores while gaming?

 

[Eximo]

This is a tricky one. You have an okay CPU and a decent GPU as well. If you feel the performance isn't quite enough, upgrading to a 1060 might be a little disappointing. It will be faster, but your CPU will start to hold you back on some titles, and particularly on titles that coming out or about to come out.

If you are sticking with 1080p at 60hz, I would say to start saving money for a complete rebuild rather then buying parts now.

Zen is something to look forward to, though it will be interesting to see how that turns out. Kaby-Lake details are starting to leak, and it looks like a 200-300Mhz increase to stock clocks across the board.

Also just got AMD and Nvidia on their first process shrink in a good while. GDDR5X is likely the pinnacle of GDDR5. Nvidia already has a few cards with 16GB of HBM2, so that will be another leap forward when the next cards come out, and you still have Vega from AMD next year.

With all that, I would try to stick it out.

I'm personally going to burn some money and upgrade to a Kaby Lake system to get me an NVMe SSD.

 

[ProgamerIV]

It may bottleneck the 1060 slighly in some cpu heavy titles, but a small bottleneck is not the end of the world assuming that 8350 is working optimally in that board. That motherboard has an older chipset and only a 4+1 VRM design with no heatsink, I have heard about boards like that throttling 125watt TDP chips like that 8350. Asrock even puts a asterisk next to that cpu in their support list for that board saying they recommend you have a cooler with a fan that blows air down onto the motherboard. Are you sure you are getting full clock speed on all cores while gaming?

I have 5 fans in my PC case, airflow is quite great. Just ran a cpu activity monitor while playing GTA V, then a few other titles, CPU seems to work alright, temperature was 72 celsius degrees maximum, but rarely going above 66-67.