While old, it's single thread faster than a lot of Athlon stuff out there
Sorry, but that is synthetic garbage. I finally found a review of the 880K and they listed the GPU they used, a Sapphire R9 390X.
https://www.relaxedtech.com/reviews/amd/x4-880k-versus-g4400/1
I don't play firestrike or any other synthetic benchmark. I honestly skip every synthetic benchmark that comes out after the ATI 2900X garbage that happened. It's pointless. Show me real programs that real people use. Look at the Cinebench R15 results. All the AMD CPUs score a single core bench of ~95points. Intel? The G4400 scores nearly 140.
But it's the gaming results I want to point out. Game after game they test, with a R9 390X mind you, they test at 720 with high settings. In most of the games you are looking at results in the 60-80FPS range. Do you really look at that and think it's the fault of the 390X and they should have tested with a bigger GPU? They show the results of three low end CPUs paired with a 390X and don't get the results you'd expect. And yes, they used an SSD.
A cpu architecture upgrade is needed for a long-term solution, but money is tight so whaddagonnadoo?
Money is tight? For you or the OP? OP said he had $300 to spend. I don't remember small budget being mentioned. Please try to remember we are trying to help the OP. If the OP says he has $300 to spend on an upgrade that doesn't mean spend only $100 of it because you somehow know his/her situation and s/he needs to save as much of his/her money as possible.
It would be one thing if he was having major stuttering, but a once in a while lag is indicating the cpu is getting interrupted
Adding system ram would be something to consider, but he already has 16GBs. SSD might help, but again considering the system as a whole I would think a 4C/4T low end CPU from years ago might be the issue. (Could be temps, board issue, power, etc as well.)
Your opinions aren't facts no matter how much you think they are, just as mine aren't facts and are just my experience.
True. And thank you for voicing your experience. Perhaps if you lead with your cousins issue instead of just saying buy a bigger card things would have gone different. But you do realize 3 mods and a Herald have all suggested a new core right? Do you care to guess how much experience is there? The four of us are so wrong because of your cousin? Interesting.