Should I upgrade a build a new rig?

[Derek Adamson]

I currently have a pretty decent gaming rig. It has an AMD FX 6100, MSI G43 board, 8GB Vengeance 1600 RAM, SanDisk Extreme 128 GB SSD, 1 500 GB and 1 1TB Western Digital 7200 RPM drives, Antec 750 watt 80+ Bronze PSU, Cooler Master Evo 212 CPU Cooler, Zalman Z11 Plus case, and a Gigabyte Windforce Radeon HD 7950. My question is I want to upgrade the CPU and GPU, because I feel like the processor is to weak for gaming and may be bottlenecking my GPU. And I want to upgrade to either a GTX 970 or a 290X. I'm pretty much settled on the FX 8320 because for its performance and cost it's perfect for me. The dilemma is I think I could get about 700 out of my PC if I sold it as is. But I'm not sure if just upgrading or building a whole new rig is going to be cheaper. If I but a whole new rig I would need it to be under $1100 to meet my budget after I sell the other computer. Or I could sell the processor and graphics card for a couple hundred bucks and just upgrade my current pc. In that case I need the upgrades to stay under $600 if I could get $250 out of the GPU and CPU.

 

[Suztera]

If possible go Intel but the FX 8320 route is still ok as long you change your motherboard if you want to overclock it. Go for ASUS M5A97 EVO R2.0 or a 990FX motherboard.

 

[Derek Adamson]

I really don't care for Intel. The gains in going to Intel do not justify the massive price increase in both the cpu and motherboard. And for the maybe $250 bucks it would cost me to upgrade to a higher AMD setup I can't even get something comparable from Intel let alone better. And why do you think that board is not good enough for overclocking? It's worked fine now for almost a year with my 6100 at 4.2GHz. (Stock is 3.3GHz) (I'm not trying be rude either, I just really want to know what you think is subpar about that board for overclocking) My main question though is should I just upgrade my already existing computer or build or whole new rig from an economical standpoint. I really like the 970 and I think it will be what I go with graphics card wise, upgrade or new rig. So any suggestion should be based around that card unless someone can justify an AMD card over it. (It's really hard for me to say that as I'm a pretty big AMD fan, but the specs are hard to ignore for the 970)

 

[Suztera]

MSI G43 board doens't have VRM heatsinks and the power phase is only 4+1 which really not good for FX 83** cpus. You want 6+2 designs at least which the ASUS M5A97 EVO R2.0 has. Since you overlocking, 4+2 power phases won't really cut it well especially with no VRM heatsinks. YOu may experience thermal throttling and shutdowns due to the VRM temps if you going to use that motherboard.

I interested in AMD R9 300 series. If they do a die shrink of 20nm, I want to see what difference in performance, power consumption and heat compared to Maxwell 28nm.But you probably can't wait that long for it to release. There nothing wrong getting the GTX 970 unless you find a really cheap R9 290X and don't mind the cons of the card.