Requesting a little help with an upgrade!

[Tunahamdan]

Hi I've recently been looking into purchasing a new GPU however im a little lost on what to get!

Im not sure if my current components will accommodate the new card, secondly, im not sure if the cards im looking at will overpower other components, ie. Ram, CPU and therefore not work at its full potential

I will post a list of my current hardware components below followed by the graphics card I've been looking into purchasing

CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 965 (AM3 Socket)

GPU - Radeon 5870 1GB(struggles to run todays games!)

MOBO - Gygabyte GA-880 USB3

RAM - 8GB DD3 Corsair Vengeance

Im looking into purchasing a Radeon R9 290X / 390X but im unsure whether it would be overkill on the rest of the parts. Im a graphics whore and prefer the best possible graphics options available, willingly sacrificing precious FPS (30fps min!)

Any help is apreciated, Thanks!!
Dan

 

[Sapphire Thunder]

R9 390x would be bottlenecked. R9 290x might be slightly bottlenecked.

It would be most efficient to go with R9 380 or GTX 960.

I would say take GTX 960 because you will be losing a lot performance when using AMD gpu with AMD cpu.
Especially one as old as Phenom.

 

[doubletake]

No such thing as overkill for PC components. Get what you can comfortably afford and call it a day. Yes, top-end performance of a modern high-end GPU will be lacking on your setup compared to a newer Intel setup, but so what, you can always upgrade that too. Your desire to run at the highest settings possible goes against your desire to not mis-match performance tiers with your hardware.

 

[Sapphire Thunder]

No such thing as overkill for PC components. Get what you can comfortably afford and call it a day. Yes, top-end performance of a modern high-end GPU will be lacking on your setup compared to a newer Intel setup, but so what, you can always upgrade that too. Your desire to run at the highest settings possible goes against your desire to not mis-match performance tiers with your hardware.

He could go straight for Fury then. And while at it, he might as well go for Fury X. But then again, if he were to go that far, he might as well get GTX980TI.

See how stupid that thinking is? Everything has a limit and his is R9 380/GTX960.
Though, a GTX970 would still be possibility.

 

[Tunahamdan]

Thanks alot for the replies guys however im still a little uncertain on what to do. Would it be in my interest to upgrade CPU along with GPU? Would that prevent higher end cards becoming bottle necked, or would my motherboard be restricting them as thats also quite dated. I would be happy to upgrade CPU aswell as GPU if i would be making more performance gains.

"I would say take GTX 960 because you will be losing a lot performance when using AMD gpu with AMD cpu.
Especially one as old as Phenom."

You also mention this which kinda confuses me as i've always been under the impression you can only use AMD CPU's with AMD GPU's and vica versa, and the same applies with Nvidia.

 

[doubletake]

No. Besides, what how does that apply to Nvidia? Nvidia doesn't make desktop processors lol.

What you need to know is this: your upgrade plan will work just fine, i.e. buying new GPU right now to replace your 5870 will net you a decent performance improvement, but if you really reaaaaally care about GPU performance being held back because of the aged base platform you're running on, then you need to upgrade to a newer Intel system.

What you need to understand though is this: you being a self-proclaimed "graphics whore" means that if you actually seriously want to be able to run at the highest settings your hardware can possibly push, then you need to get over the thought that something might be "overkill" and simply accept the fact that you need fast hardware to push fast hardware.

Looks like it's upgrade time for you.

 

[Tunahamdan]

Okay so lets say im looking more towards Nvidia, with, im currently looking at a gtx970, what kind of CPU should i be looking at to match performance, would something like AMD FX 8350 be good? or when you imply i need to upgrade, are you implying i need to upgrade Ram and MOBO aswell?

 

[Sapphire Thunder]

"I would say take GTX 960 because you will be losing a lot performance when using AMD gpu with AMD cpu.
Especially one as old as Phenom."

You also mention this which kinda confuses me as i've always been under the impression you can only use AMD CPU's with AMD GPU's and vica versa, and the same applies with Nvidia.

There is absolutely no restriction that would stop you from using NVidia with AMD.

Also, due to the memory bandwidth of AMD gpus, they actually will perform worse with AMD cpus since they can't feed the data to gpu fast enough.
So when comparing NVidia and AMD gpu that normally are at same performance level on Intel cpu, and then you change to equal AMD cpu, the AMD gpu will actually get lower performance.

In short...AMD cpus will bottleneck AMD gpus easier.

Especially in cpu-intensive games like GTA V and The Witcher 3.

 

[doubletake]

He could go straight for Fury then. And while at it, he might as well go for Fury X. But then again, if he were to go that far, he might as well get GTX980TI.

See how stupid that thinking is? Everything has a limit and his is R9 380/GTX960.
Though, a GTX970 would still be possibility.

You have a learning disability or something? I said to get what he can "comfortably afford", whatever that limit may be (which he did not mention), NOT to simply go and max out his credit cards on GPUS when the rest of his system isn't up to par.

Read and comprehend first, then hurl insults, it tends to work out better if done in that order.