Upgrade computer Help

[Cj Kinsey]

I currently have a AMD 965 BE and MSI 7850 2gb oc edition, and a AMD 970a-D3 mother board with 8gb ram. im curious on what i should upgrade if i have a little over 300 to spend. im thinking of buying a combo motherboard/cpu and switching to Intel

 

[Obnoxious]

Assuming you're from the United States and your budget of 300 is in United States Dollars (USD), considering you mentioned you have "a little over 300" I would recommend:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($247.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock H97 PERFORMANCE ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($85.00 @ Newegg)
Total: $332.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-08-14 17:50 EDT-0400

You should use all your existing components with the new motherboard and CPU. The processor I've selected is a Xeon E3-1231v3 which provides similar performance to an i7-4770; they're both quad-core and are Hyper Threaded (effectively Microsoft Windows utilising the 8 threads as cores). Note: The Xeon doesn't have integrated graphics, so you'll always need a dedicated/discrete GPU to boot; you don't have to worry about this factor as you already have a 7850.

You should notice a major performance boost with the above by switching to the Intel Xeon. However if that is out of your budget, I would recommend the i5-4460. The i5 again should give you a noticeable difference from your existing build anyhow, it is a quad-core processor without the Hyper Threading. Gaming wise the i5-4460 is more than enough, but if you did want to go all out, the Xeon E3-1231v3 is available.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($179.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock H97 PERFORMANCE ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($85.00 @ Newegg)
Total: $264.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-08-14 17:58 EDT-0400

All the best.

 

[Cj Kinsey]

thank you i went with the i5 4590 for 200 and a msi motherboard similar to the ASRock, only because i never used ASRock before