Should I upgrade or overclock?

[geek man69]

Hello, I already pre-ordered fallout 4 since it was on sale on steam and when I looked at the recommended specs, it seems that I need a "AMD FX-9590 4.7 GHz". here's my specs...

-GPU-GeForce GTX 970
-CPU-AMD(tm)-8320 Eight-Core Processor (3.51)
-Memory-16.00 GB RAM
-Mother Board-Sabertooth 990FX R2.0
-CPU Cooler-NZXT Kraken X61
-OS-Windows 10

Will I need to upgrade my CPU, overclock it, or just stay the same?

 

[koffeeshop77]

stay the same you wont be lacking cpu power, i think if anything you might lack GPU power, if you cant play max settings it will be because the the 970.

 

[ChumP]

You should overclock that CPU , if you have the possibility.
Fallout 4 will run without problems on stock speeds, but if you can get some extra performance for free, why not to do it.

 

[koffeeshop77]

actully you can overclock the cpu. i thought you already had the AMD FX-9590, but yeah you can over clock and reach the same results with out spending money.

 

[koffeeshop77]

besides those 9590 are a horible investmenst cause they run at 220watts which is over kill.

 

[delaro]

Hello, I already pre-ordered fallout 4 since it was on sale on steam and when I looked at the recommended specs, it seems that I need a "AMD FX-9590 4.7 GHz". here's my specs...

-GPU-GeForce GTX 970
-CPU-AMD(tm)-8320 Eight-Core Processor (3.51)
-Memory-16.00 GB RAM
-Mother Board-Sabertooth 990FX R2.0
-CPU Cooler-NZXT Kraken X61
-OS-Windows 10

Will I need to upgrade my CPU, overclock it, or just stay the same?

FX chips are showing good signs of Weakness now "3+" year old CPU's vs a I5 4690K and up which are 1 year old or less. Your CPU will easily overclock up to 4.5ghz on Water and will give you the same FPS as a FX-9590 while using less power, but like most titles now your going to have to play around with settings to keep frames high. So should you overclock or Upgrade depends on do you want to drop ~$280+ on a new CPU/Motherboard to stay closer to the Ultra side or can you not spend anything and just play the game with reduced settings.

 

[Cryio]

Overclock the CPU to 4.5-4.7 GHz and then cry, because we're talking about Bethesda and their last 4 games (Oblivion, Fallout 3, New Vegas and Skyrim) were limited to DirectX9 and only used 2 CPU threads, which made AMD CPUs a terrible choice for these games. Even an overclocked Athlon 860K is better than an FX 9590 in Bethesda's games.

But who knows, maybe in their new game with the DirectX11 render they learned their lesson and the engine will know how to use more than 2 CPU threads.

 

[jaguarskx]

I think the system requirements for FO4 is a bit over exaggerated. You should overclock your CPU for better performance if your current CPU cooler is good enough.

If you were to upgrade, then I recommend going with a modern Core i5 CPU (not necessarily Skylake). Fallout 4 uses an updated version of the Creation Engine that was designed for Skyrim. CPU benchmarks of Skyrim showed that a 2nd gen Sandy Bridge i5-2500k provides a little over 25% better performance compared to the FX-8350 (both at stock speed) when using the same GPU, high graphic settings and resolution (1080p).