What should I upgrade?

[NuclearMuffin]

I have about 350 dollars I am willing to spend on some pc upgrades. I primarily use it for gaming. My current specs are:

Intel Core i3-2120 @ 3.30 GHz Dual Core
Gateway DX4870 Motherboard
6 GB DDR3 RAM
NVIDIA Geforce GTX 550 Ti
PSU 300w

If I want the best possible settings on current games (BF4, DayZ, ETC), what products would you recommend?

 

[Krishna Moorthy]

I cant even get best setting on BF4 with $ 600 D: i can play on high tho but i made some bad design choices.

Your going to need more monies

You could upgrade your gpu but any modern gpu is going to get bottlenecked by your cpu

 

[Outlander_04]

GTX 760 + 500 watt power supply

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1pJ1V

 

[Krishna Moorthy]

GTX 760 + 500 watt power supply

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1pJ1V

Will his i3 not bottleneck that...

 

[Swordkd]

I would upgrade the Power Supply, then toss in a new Cpu. That will set up you nicely for when you have a little more money and you can afford a better video card. BF4 definitely needs a better Cpu than the i3. So, this is what we are looking at:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3330 3.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($159.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Antec High Current Gamer 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($64.00 @ Amazon)
Total: $223.99
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-29 15:10 EST-0500)

:edit: This is an example of Cpu scaling with a 780gtx.

 

[Outlander_04]

GTX 760 + 500 watt power supply

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1pJ1V

Will his i3 not bottleneck that...

In all the games like skyrim that dont use multiple processor cores it will not .

In modern games that can use all available processor cores it may be slower in online gaming , but should be still be a great gaming experience
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-4-graphics-card-performance,3634-10.html
shows an i3 that is only marginally faster than 2100 being only 10% slower than a more powerful i5 than has been suggested as an upgrade .
Better gaming performance is based on a better graphics card , not on a better cpu

 

[Outlander_04]

I would upgrade the Power Supply, then toss in a new Cpu. That will set up you nicely for when you have a little more money and you can afford a better video card. BF4 definitely needs a better Cpu than the i3. So, this is what we are looking at:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3330 3.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($175.48 @ Newegg Canada)
Power Supply: Antec High Current Gamer 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($54.99 @ Memory Express)
Total: $230.47
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-29 15:09 EST-0500)

are you absolutely sure the mb has a bios that will support that processor?
Did you even check?

 

[Swordkd]

I would upgrade the Power Supply, then toss in a new Cpu. That will set up you nicely for when you have a little more money and you can afford a better video card. BF4 definitely needs a better Cpu than the i3. So, this is what we are looking at:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3330 3.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($175.48 @ Newegg Canada)
Power Supply: Antec High Current Gamer 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($54.99 @ Memory Express)
Total: $230.47
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-29 15:09 EST-0500)

are you absolutely sure the mb has a bios that will support that processor?

He might need to update the bios, but that specific Cpu is listed as supported for that desktop. http://support.gateway.com/s/desktop/2012/Gateway/DX/DX4870/DX4870sp2.shtml Perhaps that's just the Cpu's that model can come with, but I'm sure it'll support that specific Cpu.

 

[Outlander_04]

Unfortunately adding an i5 wont make any difference to gaming performance NOW , since he would be stuck with the graphics card he has

 

[Swordkd]

Unfortunately adding an i5 wont make any difference to gaming performance NOW , since he would be stuck with the graphics card he has

Actually it would. Look at the graph, an i5 performs better than an i3 with the same video card. The difference might not be as much with the 550ti, or it might be more because that Gpu doesn't have the horsepower of the 780gtx.

 

[Swordkd]

Actually, might not support that Cpu i listed. It's not showing information for the SB series of Cpu's, which his motherboard came with. Looks like he has triple channel memory too, which worries me. No info on the gateway site either for that specific model, which I believe is the DX4870-UB20P. Odd.

:edit: Actually, looks like the socket type is listed as 1155, so it should support the Ivy Bridge cpu. Gah, this is why you build your own, lol.

 

[Outlander_04]

Unfortunately adding an i5 wont make any difference to gaming performance NOW , since he would be stuck with the graphics card he has

Actually it would. Look at the graph, an i5 performs better than an i3 with the same video card. The difference might not be as much with the 550ti, or it might be more because that Gpu doesn't have the horsepower of the 780gtx.

Your chart shows play with a top end graphics card . Its utterly ridiculous to think that doubling the cpu cores will transform the performance of a 550 ti . It wont .
Im picking it would make a difference of one or 2 fps at most

But change the graphics card and you can turn detail setting up and have decent frame rates