Upgrading gpu to R9 390 with an oldish computer

[POT019]

Good day guys. Can anyone help with the decision of up grading my gpu. I currently have:
GA-H61M-S2P
Intel core i3-2120 @ 3.30 GHz
8GB of ddr3 ram
Geforce GTX 650 1GB
450W PSU

I want upgrade my pc to a Radeon R9 390. Would the CPU bottleneck the performance and would it work only to upgrade the GPU and leave everything else as is, or would it be best to uparade the entire pc?
The goal is just for gaming @ 1080p on high settings with new games like Doom.

Any advice would greatly be appreciated.

 

[rhelmar1]

you will bottleneck the 390 and your psu is not enough to power the card. You will want to upgrade your cpu and psu. I would recommend waiting for the 480 and the 1060. both will outperform it, and cost less. upgrading your cpu and psu will still be necassary. Especially the psu.

 

[POT019]

you will bottleneck the 390 and your psu is not enough to power the card. You will want to upgrade your cpu and psu. I would recommend waiting for the 480 and the 1060. both will outperform it, and cost less. upgrading your cpu and psu will still be necassary. Especially the psu.

What type of cpu and PSU would you suggest I get for the 480 and the 1060? Oh and I am not familiar with the 1060?

 

[Husseo19]

you will bottleneck the 390 and your psu is not enough to power the card. You will want to upgrade your cpu and psu. I would recommend waiting for the 480 and the 1060. both will outperform it, and cost less. upgrading your cpu and psu will still be necassary. Especially the psu.

What type of cpu and PSU would you suggest I get for the 480 and the 1060?

As for cpu, your socket is a 1155, so the best option you can get is a i7 3770, it will survive long. and you can get it pretty cheap nowadays.
As for the GPU the 390 is a beast, and depending on the model of the card the PSU requirement varies between 600 and 750 watts, so make sure to include that in your question
the 1070 will cost as much as 390 and is more power effecient, and performs better than the titanX. I would totally recommend waiting for that card, if you are not a fan of nvidia tho, just stick with 390 as it more than enough for a 1080 gaming.

 

[POT019]

you will bottleneck the 390 and your psu is not enough to power the card. You will want to upgrade your cpu and psu. I would recommend waiting for the 480 and the 1060. both will outperform it, and cost less. upgrading your cpu and psu will still be necassary. Especially the psu.

What type of cpu and PSU would you suggest I get for the 480 and the 1060?

As for cpu, your socket is a 1155, so the best option you can get is a i7 3770, it will survive long. and you can get it pretty cheap nowadays.
As for the GPU the 390 is a beast, and depending on the model of the card the PSU requirement varies between 600 and 750 watts, so make sure to include that in your question
the 1070 will cost as much as 390 and is more power effecient, and performs better than the titanX. I would totally recommend waiting for that card, if you are not a fan of nvidia tho, just stick with 390 as it more than enough for a 1080 gaming.

Thank you very much!

 

[j3ster]

Id personally recommend wait and save for the GTX 1070 since its around the same price as the 390 but will absolutely perform better so wait till the release and grab your GPU, for PSU if you are going for the 1070 some say 550-600 80+ gold PSU would go well with it. but for a 390 youd need more. but really though if you can wait go for the GTX 1070 instead xD

 

[JUICEhunter]

I'll give you a few choices depending on your next few upgrades:

If you don't plan to change anything, get a gtx 960/950 depending if you have 1 or zero 6 pin power connectors on your PSU and you can even overclock GPU without bottleneck/lack of power.

You could also get a 970 (only worth it if it's really cheap as the beast 1070 will cost as low as $380) assuming you have two 6 pin power connections on your PSU but you would not be able to overclock and even at stock would experience a slight bottleneck.

You could just get a new PSU to power a 390 and be able to OC a little but just like the 970 which performs the same you'd have a slight CPU bottleneck so if you insist on changing nothing but GPU get a 970/960/950.

Depending on if 1070 can run on a single 6 pin and it's overall power usage you may be able get away with keeping PSU but you would definitely need a faster CPU, the cool thing about 2nd gen Intel is you can use and 2nd/3rd gen i3/i5/i7 but I would go with any 2nd/3rd gen i5/i7 CPU if you don't want to severely bottleneck the 1070 but most likely you'll want to update PSU anyway as a $50 500w seasonic PSU will do the job, why spend $350 plus on a GPU and under-power it?

 

[POT019]

Id personally recommend wait and save for the GTX 1070 since its around the same price as the 390 but will absolutely perform better so wait till the release and grab your GPU, for PSU if you are going for the 1070 some say 550-600 80+ gold PSU would go well with it. but for a 390 youd need more. but really though if you can wait go for the GTX 1070 instead xD

Hi, is the i7 2600 a good cpu and worth the buy?

 

[JUICEhunter]

It is, that's the processor I have been using with my 780ti with no issues.

 

[coozie7]

Looks like the i7 2600 is supported: http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=4293 although the 3XXX chips are a bit quicker, either will have to be sourced through a used seller from E-bay or Craiglist.
Before any CPU upgrade, don't forget to update the BIOS to the latest version your MB version supports!

Adding a decent quality power supply is s really good idea and this may help: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2547993/psu-tier-list.html no need to go mad here, a good quality 650W unit will easily run the system, even with a R9 390 inside it!

If you can hold off, then do so, the new GTX10XX cards look very, very good and AMD has yet to announce any real details of its new Polaris based parts, but odds are that either will use less power, have higher performance and, probably cost less than the current generation of cards.
If you can't hold off, grab a GTX970, if for no other reason than its better thermal/power performance over the R9 390.

Don't use Doom as a yardstick for graphics performance, they REALLY nailed performance with this game, it 'll run sweetly on lower end hardware (try it on yours, as is) and spectacularly well on higher end stuff, if you really want to stress the system, try Rise of the Tomb Raider, particularly in the Soviet Installation and Geothermal Valley sections!

 

[POT019]

Looks like the i7 2600 is supported: http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=4293 although the 3XXX chips are a bit quicker, either will have to be sourced through a used seller from E-bay or Craiglist.
Before any CPU upgrade, don't forget to update the BIOS to the latest version your MB version supports!

Adding a decent quality power supply is s really good idea and this may help: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2547993/psu-tier-list.html no need to go mad here, a good quality 650W unit will easily run the system, even with a R9 390 inside it!

If you can hold off, then do so, the new GTX10XX cards look very, very good and AMD has yet to announce any real details of its new Polaris based parts, but odds are that either will use less power, have higher performance and, probably cost less than the current generation of cards.
If you can't hold off, grab a GTX970, if for no other reason than its better thermal/power performance over the R9 390.

Don't use Doom as a yardstick for graphics performance, they REALLY nailed performance with this game, it 'll run sweetly on lower end hardware (try it on yours, as is) and spectacularly well on higher end stuff, if you really want to stress the system, try Rise of the Tomb Raider, particularly in the Soviet Installation and Geothermal Valley sections!

When I buy a CPU from a used seller what will I want to be looking out for? I'll try my best to get 3xxx series cpu.

I'll also rather wait for the 1070 gpu and amd's polarised to arrive before I buy a new gpu, sounds like the better option to wait. I will start buying the psu and cpu so long, and wait for the gpu.

I haven't thought of putting the system under stress yet, I'll go and try it.

Thanks for all the help! It really helps a lot.

 

[coozie7]

@ POTO19: If you're buying from a used seller look for; Plenty of good feedback and a long trading history, avoid sellers with a long history and poor feedback and be cautious of sellers with a short history and little or no feedback, they're often private sellers splitting up an old system for parts to help pay for an upgrade-although they are often honest you're obviously taking some risk here.

Good idea to hold off and do the CPU/PSU upgrade first.

Beware of stress testing! Under EXTREME conditions it is possible to damage the system. Do this with caution and keep monitoring software running to check the temperatures during any stress test and exit the test if things start to get too hot.