Wich one should i upgrade first? gaming, kinda

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pandorondan

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Nov 30, 2017
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I have Amd athlon II x3 445 3.10 ghz 4gb ram and 730 gt 2gb 128 bit

yes i know very low pc, not my main pc tho, i want to build 2 computers and this one i want to upgrade for my brother, and yes he is a gamer, and i'm upgrading it piece by piece, but i need to know what to upgrade first, the ram to 8 gigs? the cpu to I5? or the video card?, i want it to be a low budget pc so it would run most of the game (not high spec ones like bf1 or etc) the card that i want to buy it's a let's say average, gtx 750 ti gddr5, so what to get first?
 


Well, that would depend on the games he wants to play. It all needs changing though- and if you change CPU you are likely going to need to do motherboard and ram at same time (as an Athlon II would be on old DDR2 memory I think?)....

I think your best bet would be look for a second hand platform to upgrade to. There are lots of much more powerful motherboard / cpu / ram combos out there- look for something like an old Sandy Bridge setup (e.g. i5 2500 k) with motherboard and ram.

The GT730 is good enough to run quite a few games at lower resolution / settings so I'd hold onto that for now.
 
My motherboard is Gigabyte GA-MA74GMT-S2 socket m2 AM3 and ddr3 , i would try to buy a full build but i want to upgrade it myself, my resolution is kinda big 1920x1080 and the gtx 750TI works kinda good on it, but the vid card i got fits badly with my resolution, the games i want to play, hm, like GTA 5 atleast on normal, or cs go, mostly the games that most of us play
 


Hmm ok- well I've had a look at your motherboard and the best CPU you can get for it would be a Phenom II X6 1055t as per the list here:
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-MA74GMT-S2-rev-10#support-cpu

Note that is a 6 core cpu, but it is still very old. Phenom II can't run DX12 games (they crash- don't have the required instruction set), but should still handle older DX11 stuff like GTA 5.

So getting 8gb of ram and finding a used 1055t on Ebay would be a cheap option to get a better system. Either that or as I say get a newer platform that still uses DDR3 (by platform upgrade I mean buy a used mothebroard + cpu combo- quite a few people sell them second hand once they upgrade to a new machine, anything up to the Intel 4000 series still use DDR 3 so lots of options if you can find something at a good price).
 
So i should buy a cpu first instead of video card?, i've asked some friends and they said that Video card would be a great choice since my resolution is bigger than my video card can handle, they also said something like overclocking my cpu to a quad core wont damage it, and an x6 isnt that bad of a choice either since my cpu is small, but i think that video card is a bigger performance increaser than cpu or ram, should i do cpu gpu ram or gpu cpu ram?
 


It's difficult to say- some games are more cpu demanding, others are more gpu demanding.

If you can get hold of a cheap GTX 750ti it's worth looking at, although there are much better cards around these days. I'd personally look at something like a GTX 950, GTX 1050, RX 460 or RX 560 for a reasonable entry level gpu- depending on budget. In games that are limited by GPU then that will make them faster- but I think an Athlon II is going to hold most games back in 2017, which is why I was suggesting changing that first.
 
There are no good cpu upgrades for your motherboard.
If you need a cpu upgrade, you should look at current gen intel or ryzen.

Some games are graphics limited like fast action shooters.
Others are cpu core speed limited like strategy, sims, and mmo.
Multiplayer tends to like many threads.

You need to find out which.
------------------------------------------------------------
To help clarify your CPU/GPU options, run these two tests:

a) Run YOUR games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
If your FPS stays the same, you are likely more cpu limited.

b) Limit your cpu, either by reducing the OC, or, in windows power management, limit the maximum cpu% to something like 70%.
Go to control panel/power options/change plan settings/change advanced power settings/processor power management/maximum processor state/
This will simulate what a lack of cpu power will do.
Conversely what a 30% improvement in core speed might do.

You should also experiment with removing one or more cores/threads. You can do this in the windows msconfig boot advanced options option.
You will need to reboot for the change to take effect. Set the number of threads to less than you have.
This will tell you how sensitive your games are to the benefits of many threads.
If you see little difference, your game does not need all the threads you have.



It is possible that both tests are positive, indicating that you have a well balanced system,
and both cpu and gpu need to be upgraded to get better gaming FPS.
-------------------------------------------------------------
 
Yea but if i get a higher video card than my cpu is going to hold me back even more, and since my brother isnt in those newer games and he is mostly as school he plays mostly gta 5 and cs go, and from what i know gta 5 is more gpu consuming than cpu, but i dont know for sure, cpu or gpu they are both great choices, but i'm trying to focus on the component that improves the most, and since resolution is gpu based that's why i say gpu first, but since the bigger the resolution more props are fitting in the image so that's what makes it more cpu consuming, since cpu processes the props and all, ram is the last thing i will upgrade since they doin good but not too good
 
Buy your graphics card first.
Then, you will see how you do.
If you determine that the cpu is holding you back for YOUR games, then a graphics card is very easy to move to a new cpu build.

8gb is likely what you want.
But... I would not spend any more in your current pc. Anything new will need ddr4 ram. Adding 4gb of ddr3 is not always going to work; ram needs to be matched in a kit.
 


I tried lowering the resolution and yes i get more frames, like from 1920x1080 to 1366x768 i got from 25 fps to 60 fps, since my card works the best on lower resolutions, my cpu is strong enough i think, that's why i say that gpu should be upgraded for my current resolution.
 
Oh yeah and my motherboard says PCI-E express 2.0 x16 and the video card that i want it's 3.0 x16, is it going to work or it wont fit?
 


PCI-E is backwards compatible, you can run a 3.0 x 16 card on PCI-E 1.0 if you really wanted. PCI-E 2 x 16 is fine for pretty much any graphics card (performance difference going from 2.0 - 3.0 is like 5% with a 980ti, Toms did some tests a while back).
 
What do you mean by backwards compatible?, i've bought a while ago like 1 or 2 years ago a video card that needed pci-e 3.0 on a 2.0 and my pc didnt start, and some friend said i needed to downgrade my bios or some sort, so it works, but i bought a kit and that video card i sold it, i didnt really want to solve the puzzle by that time so i chosed the simplier way, building a pc is kinda fuzzy to me
 
You are good.
Video cards are both forward and backwards compatible(pcie 1/2/3)
The only difference is in performance, and that is minimal, happening only on the very strongest of cards.

Your test tells me that you would benefit from upgrading the graphics card first.
 
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