Upgrading AMD CPU from FX 4100, what to go for?

[SDBradfo]

Hello,

I am looking to upgrade my FX 4100 because it's a pretty rubbish processor, and it definitely bottlenecks me when gaming (which is the main purpose of the PC)

I am not sure which processor to go for, I've been looking at either the FX 6300 or FX 8320, will I benefit more with the 8320 when gaming at all?

What is the gaming performance going to be like with the 6300? Will it be a major improvement over my current 4100?

My GPU is a Gigabyte Windforce OC Edition GTX 570.

I can get the FX 6300 for about £100, whereas the 8320 is closer to 140. Thanks

 

[SDBradfo]

Should I wait for the new Steamroller CPUs? Any idea on when these will be out?

My other specs are:

ASRock 970 Extreme 4
Fx 4100 (OCed to 4GHz)
16GB 1333mhz RAM
5900RPM Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB HDD
GTX 570

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

That cpu is NOT bottlenecking a mid range 570 like yours.... buy a better graphics card...

All the best Brett

 

[Kamen_BG]

Like Brett said the FX 4100 is not bottlenecking your graphics card.
The FX 4100 is actaually a pretty decent CPU and the graphics card is what's bottlenecking you.
I suggest overclocking both your CPU and graphics card and you should see a reasonable increase in FPS.

 

[SDBradfo]

The GTX 570 is a pretty decent card from what I've read and experienced. I am fairly certain the FX 4100 is a very poor Bulldozer CPU which does indeed bottleneck the GPU.

 

[SDBradfo]

Also, games like Planetside 2 show a bottleneck from the CPU.

 

[Ramzzz2936]

if u want to upgrade the cpu go for fx 8350 u will see a difference in games like ps2

 

[ASHISH65]

Yes fx4100 is not so good in gaming.even intel's dual core g630 beats fx4100 in gaming.you should get amd fx 8350

 

[nekulturny]

Depending on what games specifically you are playing and at what resolution and detail settings, the FX-4100 can and will indeed bottleneck a GTX 570, although the bottleneck in question is usually not that substantial in the majority of games on the market.

As far as the processor, yes, I would just wait for Steamroller before actually upgrading the CPU itself. PileDriver is worth looking at in the form of FX-8350s or 8320s, but I just don't see the point in such a gainful improvement.

Now you say your processor "definitely" bottlenecks you on Planetside 2, I googled for results, I couldn't find any specific benchmarks with that processor, I did however find this article, if you haven't tried these things, its worth a shot since they're "Free". Are you playing it in DX11 mode? The Bulldozer CPUs tend to fair somewhat decent in DX11 vs older DX9 for some odd reason.

http://windows7themes.net/10-tips-to-speed-up-planetside-2.html

Also keep in mind since Planetside is a MMORPG, you're also limited by your internet connection. How does your internet fair?

http://www.speedtest.net/

 

[ITFT]

I would definitely wait for the next year for the Steamroller.

For a time being get an SSD your system will be a lot better with SSD rather then your "green" hard drive! Even the cheapest OCZ will make a huge difference compared to your HDD.


Paul
ITFT Computers

 

[nekulturny]

I would definitely wait for the next year for the Steamroller.

For a time being get an SSD your system will be a lot better with SSD rather then your "green" hard drive! Even the cheapest OCZ will make a huge difference compared to your HDD.


Paul
ITFT Computers

That would be worthwhile. Green hard drives tend to be slower, as they're geared more for mass storage with lower power consumption. SSDs beat traditional harddrives green or otherwise in both speed and power usage (then again, hard drives really don't use much power to begin with).

 

[SDBradfo]

What is the smallest SSD I could get and use as a boot drive? I have 16GB RAM as well, I've heard that RAM uses storage some how.

 

[nekulturny]

I would suggest at least 128GB, ideally 256GB, technically you could use a 60GB but between Windows7, Virtual memory, and NTFS formatting, you'll use almost 20GB of it. Since a single game can easily take over 10GB nowadays, you can see how that creates an issue of space.

Its the other way around with RAM and storage, the hard drive reserves space as "Virtual memory". The amount of virtual memory is dynamic, you can manually set the parameters, generally you want at least 1/4 of your system's RAM, in your case this would be 4GB. With 16GB, you probably shouldn't need that much.

Back in the times of WinXP RAM was more expensive than hard drive space, RAM is obviously faster than virtual memory via a hard drive, I might be wrong, but if storage space is a concern, I don't think you'd take a performance hit if you were to limit your paging file size to something really low like 500mb.