Question about bottlenecking

[LeviathanTheMighty]

Hey, guys,
I've been considering upgrading for a while, but I've been confused as to whether or not my PC has been bottlenecking. Currently my rig uses an AMD HD 7870 GPU, but with an AMD A8-5600K APU. However, when I asked about whether this processor could be bottlenecking the GPU on another forum, I was told not only that it wasn't, but I was told that I should - instead of upgrading my processor - I should instead buy a better GPU. I understand that this question isn't very specific, so I'll try to make it more concise; is there any way that my current build is bottlenecking, and - if not - how far could I upgrade my GPU before a bottleneck would occur?

 

[gamerk316]

CPU is probably hold you back. There is NO REASON to get an APU, then purchase a discrete GPU on top of that. The CPU portion of the APU is going to hold you back too much.

 

[lowriderflow]

download some free monitoring tools... like afterburner... you can watch the CPU usage and GPU usage while gaming. You will probably see the CPU wth most cores nearly maxed out.. pending the game.

 

[logainofhades]

That CPU is bottlenecking your GPU. Unfortunately, you need a new CPU and Motherboard to get a significant upgrade.

 

[siveshen]

Amd fx 6300 or intel i5 3rd/4th gen

 

[JOOK-D]

Budget?

 

[Vitric9]

I would like to add that The A8 5600k uses Piledriver architecture. It is almost the same as an FX 4150 in performance. BF4 is specifically coded and optimized for AMD CPUs. I imagine other games are as well and will be. That CPU would not choke the 7800 series GPU. For reasons I can't articulate right now Piledriver does very well in games

 

[LeviathanTheMighty]

Budget?

I would say that the total budget would probably be around $300-$350 USD.

 

[siveshen]

Gigabyte GA-970A-D3p am3+ -85$ amd fx 6300-110$ OR MSI A78-M-E45 FM2+ -72$ AMD athlon x4 760K FM2+ -85$

 

[logainofhades]

Budget?

I would say that the total budget would probably be around $300-$350 USD.

If that is just for board and cpu, I would go with this. You wouldn't have to worry about bottlenecks at all, even with faster GPU's.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($244.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock B85 Pro4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $314.98
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-04-30 10:48 EDT-0400)