Upgrading a system

[takenbyit]

I built my computer back in '13 with the advice of the tom's hardware community. The past 2 years the build served me well. I'm looking to do some upgrades to my system and I'm looking to see what advice the community can give me. Here is the link to the build i created:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1848893/upgrades-650-gaming-build.html

The only difference was I was advised to use a diff MB, so this is the one in my system:
ASRock 990FX Extreme3 AM3+ AMD 990FX + SB950 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

My question is what would be the best upgrade to my system considering this computer is used primarily for PC gaming. I was thinking of adding another GPU using crossfire and maybe upgrading to 16GB of RAM. Any advice would be welcomed. Links to parts is also appreciated.

 

[fudgecakes99]

The ram upgarde would be nice if you run multiple programs at once, you won't get a noticeable frame rate increase if you upgrade your ram though. Regarding crossfire/sli the way i look at it is price v performance. If i put in x amount of money i should get x performance. The problem with sli/crossfire is that if you pay for 2 cards you don't get 2 cards worth of performance. Sometimes you won't get any performance boost at all as the game couldn't be optimized for sli/crossfire. Other times if it is you only get about 1.25-1.3 times the performance. If you're lucky 1.5 times if the game is optimized for it. So if you play a lot of triple a titles. Then yes you'll get a performance boost in sli/crossfire will it be massive no. But it'll make the game run better depending on the game. Personally i'd wait until the 3xx series comes out from amd this year, and buy a better single gpu. Though theirs nothing wrong with going crossfire.

 

[psycher1]

Gpu upgrade could wait till another AMD bundle, if that's something that interests you.
You should be able to get a massive oc with that cooler on the 6300. Attach a second fan for better overclocking.
Ram upgrade unnecessary unless you monitor it and actually somehow use all 8gigs.
Motherboard could definitely help future proof to an extent if your overclocking is limited (throttles unnecessarily when pushed, even if still cooled adequately).
SSD is a must these days, I don't see one in that build. That's your starting point.

 

[takenbyit]

I actually added a samsung SSD awhile back. So if I'm reading these posts right it sounds like I'm good with RAM for now, and should consider waiting for a single GPU upgrade in the near future? The reason I ask is because I seem to get some lag with games like farcry 4 and dying light. I haven't really OC'ed my CPU and GPU. It sounds like that's the step I should be definitely take next to get a performance boost?

 

[fudgecakes99]

I actually added a samsung SSD awhile back. So if I'm reading these posts right it sounds like I'm good with RAM for now, and should consider waiting for a single GPU upgrade in the near future? The reason I ask is because I seem to get some lag with games like farcry 4 and dying light. I haven't really OC'ed my CPU and GPU. It sounds like that's the step I should be definitely take next to get a performance boost?

I'd say oc the cpu more so then the gpu. As gpu ocing usually requires just getting a waterblock and running a water cooling setup usually open loop as you really won't get much of a performance boost otherwise. With cpu's its much more forgiving to o.c. with air or close loop water, less hassle much easier, to me that is. Yeah i had some fairly bad lag with far cry 4 some sort of memory issue it continued to eat a way at my 8 gigs of memory till the game slowed to a crawl. I think it has to do with the game wanting to continually load chunks of the map even though you're not in that specific area. Also dyinglight is as un-optomized as it comes.

 

[psycher1]

FC4 just needs a performance update. As for Crossfire, go ahead. I'm running 2x 650 ti boosts and I definitely notice the performance boost. BUT, don't spend a premium on it. Again, wait until the second gpu is either dirt cheap (compared to your first) or comes with a really good bundle, which AMD is increasingly well known for these days.