Upgrading ADM FX 6300 - R9 200 system, suggestions wanted!

[Haraio]

Hey everyone

I have a gaming system that's almost three years old, I think, and I've started to hit issues with newer games, which makes me want to do some upgrading. Specifically, I've run into video game memory issues with some games, like Total War: Warhammer and Just Cause 3.

My system is as follows:
AMD Radeon R9 200
AMD FX(tm)-6300 Six-Core Processor

I assume that I'll need to switch out my video card (not very experienced with computers, as this is my first desktop bought specifically for gaming), but would I also need to change out the CPU?

 

[imsqam]

It would be better if we had more system information, what you provided is not a clear picture. An R9 200 could be any of the following video cards

Radeon R9 270
Radeon R9 270X
Radeon R9 280
Radeon R9 280X
Radeon R9 285
Radeon R9 290
Radeon R9 290X
Radeon R9 295X2

If you bought a pre-built provide the make/model. If you have a home build or retail custom build, we need information on motherboard, power supply unit (PSU) and case at the very least.

To help with the internal components, you can run a free program like CPU-Z or HWInfo64, which will tell you what RAM, CPU, motherboard and video card you have installed.

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

https://www.hwinfo.com/download.php

 

[Haraio]

Hey!

Thank you for the response. I finally managed to find my original order, and here's the full setup:


Corsair Carbide 330R Blackout Edition
Fans: 1x 120mm Front, 1x 120mm Back, Muffled, M/E-ATX, mITX, 2x USB 3.0

Corsair CX 500W PSU
ATX 12V V2.3, 80 Plus Bronze , Standard. 2x 6+2pin PCIe, 5x SATA, 4x Molex

AMD FX-6300 Black Edition, Socket AM3+
Prosessor, 3.5GHz, 6-Core, 6MB L2 + 8MB L3 Cache, 95W, 32nm, incl. cooler

Corsair H60 Hydro Series CPU cooler
120mm Radiator, 115x/2011/2011-3/1366, AM2(+)/AM3(+)/FM1/FM2, 2000 RPM, 54 CFM

ASUS M5A97 R2.0, Socket-AM3+
Motherboard, ATX, 970+SB950, DDR3, 2xG2-PCIe-x16, CFX, SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.0, UEFI

Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz 8GB CL9
Kit w/2x 4GB XMS3 modules, CL9-9-9-24, 1.5V, Low Vengeance Heatspreader

MSI Radeon R9 280X Gaming 3GB GDDR5
PCI-Express 3.0, "Twin Frozr IV", DL-DVI-I, HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort

Seagate Barracuda® 1TB
SATA 6Gb/s (SATA 3.0), 64MB Cache, 7200RPM, 3.5"

 

[Insomniac Jack]

Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of upgrades that can be done without a new motherboard. Socket AM3+ will only allow you to upgrade to the 8300 series of processors and those won't get you too far into the future. The FX-8350 is probably the best upgrade but I expect that's only going to get maybe another year of life until it's no longer viable for new games. If you were to just get a more powerful graphics card that may not help too much due to the limitations of the CPU(I'm currently running the same CPU as you). Do you have a budget for this build if so please let us know so we know what we're working with.

 

[Haraio]

Yeah, I expect I might have to switch out the motherboard, CPU, GPU and RAM all in one go. As for a budget, I would like to stay around a $1,000 max

 

[Insomniac Jack]

Well for some reason PC parts picker isn't letting me log in. I'll just suggest a few parts an hopefully somebody can price them out.
From the AMD side:
AMD Ryzen 1700 $329
Since you won't be overclocking or using SLI I'd get a board with a B350 chipset which should be around $100
16GB of DDR4 RAM I'd get yourself an SSD anywhere from 120GB and up so you can place your operating system and some games on it.
Finally a GTX1060 will be just fine for what you need but if you want to keep from upgrading again for a few years I'd get a GTX1070.

For the Intel side I'm not as familiar with their CPU's and motherboards so I'll defer that to someone else to build something for you. You should easily be able to stay under that $1000 budget with all of the recent price drops.

 

[imsqam]

Looked at your build and how it matches and meets game requirements. First, looking at the two games you listed they can be categorized as CPU intensive games
http://www.pcgamer.com/total-war-warhammer-benchmarks-strike-fear-into-cpus/
http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/just-cause-3-graphics-and-performance-guide

So game settings can be an issue, especially if you are trying to play on ultra settings
http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=24295&game=Total+War%3A+Warhammer+-+Old+World+Edition&p_make=AMD&p_deriv=FX-8350&gc_make=ATI&gc_deriv=Radeon+R9+280X+MSI+Gaming+3GB+Edition&ram=8&checkSubmit=#systemRequirements

Recommended settings ask for a FX 8350 so the FX6300 could be a consideration here. The R9 280X should be okay, it meets the recommended hardware. The 3GB of VRAM should be okay most of the time but you would have to check. 8 GB of RAM just meets requirement and you have filled two of the four RAM slots. Now you haven't said if you were overclocking, luckily your mobo is a good one capable of overclocking FX 8xxx series processors.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2384024/motherboard-tier-list-970-chipset.html

The mobo does not support FX 9xxx series processors
https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/M5A97_R20/HelpDesk_CPU/

The fastest replacement CPU you could install is the FX 8370, here is a comparison with the FX 6300
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-FX-6300-vs-AMD-FX-8370/1555vs2983
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html

So the FX8370 is an upgrade in performance, with the increase in the multi-core performance being significant. And an increase in multi-core performance maybe is what you need.

So what I would do is first get another 8GB of RAM and if you do not have an overclock on the CPU, do so. You might find that this takes care of things. If it doesn't then you could try to find a used FX 8370 or FX 8350, plunk it in and overclock. You could try to upgrade the GPU but you would have to go with a GTX 1070 or greater to see an improvement in performance. And I believe that this is not your issue.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

So upgrade path
RAM: 65 USD http://
Used CPU: 70-100 USD http://
New CPU: 145-180 USD http://

And of course you could look at a complete system upgrade to a newer platform. Let me know if you want a build for this.