Budget upgrade suggestions ? (littlebrothers rig)

Gripen90

Gripen90

Gripen90

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My littlebrother has an older PC I put together for him back in autumn 2010 which consists of MSi 790XT-G45 socket AM2+, AMD, Phenom II X4 945 3.0GHz, 4x1GB OCZ ATi CrossFire ed. PC2-6400 CL4, Sapphire Radeon HD5770 1GB & Gigabyte Radeon HD5770 1GB CrossFire, OCZ ModXstream 700watt psu
Acer V203W 20"TFT 1680x1050.

We were thinking of a way to upgrade the PC so he would be able to play BF3/BF4 at decent quality setting without going high-end !.
The budget is £300 for Ram, motherboard, cpu and graphics card.

What would be a decent upgrade that would be him some better FPS or at least possibility to play with a bit higher graphical settings ?

I've personally been thinking if I should try to find a used AMD Phenom II X6 1090T as CPU and some cheap 2x4GB pc6400 ram and the use the primary budget of a graphics cards, but I don't know if that is wise.
 
If it is mainly BF3/BF4, then your plan to splash most on GPU ad grab a 6 core Phenom would be a gd idea in combination with a mantle enabled card but imo the prices for the 6 cores are not worth it compare to what else is out there.

This would be where i would put my cash:

X58 Board + i7 920 (clock it to 3.8-4, D0's seem to clock easier if you can find one)

If you have some spare DDR3 cash lying around, whack it in and you might have enough cash left over to grab a 280, though considering the price, better to throw an extra score into the mix and get a 280x. I believe x58 boards can dual channel RAM as well as triple channel, so there is plenty of options out there for you, if you are out on the lookout on second hand markets.
 
My brother is total novice when it comes to OC and such, so he's only really interested in something "stock clocked" and is stable. And it something doesn't boot and requires cmos clearing - I'd be the one to fix it all :)

As for spare ram - the only thing I have is everything else than DDR3 laying around :)

Else my proposal for him would be something like this when it's bought all new.
AMD FX-6300 X6 3.5GHz 8MB 95W Box AM3+
ASRock 970 Pro3 R2.0
2x2GBXL RipjawsX DDR3 4GB PC 1600 CL9 G.Skill KIT (F3-12800CL9D-4GBXL)
it's around £170.
 
Dont bother with any MSI or Asrock boards for AM3+, none of them are worth the money compared to equivalent priced gigabyte or Asus boards.

If you are trying to minimize the amount spent on CPU/Mobo, one of the Asus M5A97 boards would do the trick if you keep the 6300 at stock.
 
Avenged7Fold said:
Dont bother with any MSI or Asrock boards for AM3+, none of them are worth the money compared to equivalent priced gigabyte or Asus boards.

If you are trying to minimize the amount spent on CPU/Mobo, one of the Asus M5A97 boards would do the trick if you keep the 6300 at stock.
Click to expand...

Well the ASrock is £50 and the Asus is £67... will have to look into this.
 
Avenged7Fold said:
This board would work too but tbh, didn't spec as i felt the M5A97 board is worth the bit extra.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-466-AS&groupid=701&catid=1903&subcat=1481

I have the above board to use as a spare AM3/AM3+ test board. It's VRM's would do fine on a 6300. Hell, i have even seen 8150's at stock not throttle in games on that board, though prime will make it throttle on an 8 core fx (doesn't matter, not like you can play prime :))
Click to expand...

Look like a good choice also !

Is there any disadvantages as such to choose a AMD 760 chipset over AMD 970 chipset when you think of only game performance ?
Because if we went for a 760 chipset and f.eks an FX-4100 Quad core CPU there could be room for a Radeon R9-270X card ?
But I don't know if the FX-4100 is worse than the Phenom II X4 945.
 
I'm offered a AMD Phenom II X4 975 3.6GHz for £73 ? would that be an okay upgrade and then paired with a new R9-270 card to £126 ?
 
Nevermind the above ! Finally some one approached me and offered an AMD Phenom II X6 1090Tfor £50 which I said yes to right away ! then there's more quid in the budget for a GFX.
 
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Got hold of that AMD Phenom II X6 1090T for £50 ! (I'll immidiately OC that to 3.8GHz for him).
And then we bought a new Club3D Radeon R9 270 '14 Series 2GB (955MHz core) for £125

He's now pretty happy we were able to save money on the total budget (saved £125), which he now wants to use on a SSD :)
 
Got a pair of used Geil 2GB PC2-6400 for £25 which we will add an then take out two 1GB sticks so he'll get 6GB in total.
20140321_122223.jpg
 
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Gfx arrived :D
20140320_162750.jpg


Got hold of TWO Phenom II X6 1090T's so we'll keep the best overclocker.

Also found a very good deal on Ebay from Italy of brand new 8GB (two sets of 2x2GB) Kingston DDR2 PC2-6400 1.8v low profile Ram for £26. So we'll be using them instead of the purchased Geil Ram.
 
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