Are there any cheap and cheerful upgrades I could make on this system?

PureAppleJuice · 27 Jun 2020 at 11:29

That would make for a reasonable increase in performance?

I am currently running:

AMD Athlon X4 860k on a Gigabyte F2A58M-HD2 mobo
8gb of DDR3 RAM
AMD R9200 Series

It's running in a m-ATX Lian Li case

I wondered if it is worth me upgrading the GFX for a couple of hundred or something like that? I anticipating having a full rig makeover for a couple of grand probably some point next year but as you can tell my PC is pretty ancient so I wondered if there might be a stopgap

dessimpson · 27 Jun 2020 at 11:46

Got an SSD?

Zefan · 27 Jun 2020 at 12:07

As far as performance increases are concerned, it depends ultimately what task you're talking about. I assume gaming, however are you a high fps 1080p gamer? A low FPS/high settings gamer? A 1440p high/low? What games?

Ultimately the above is sort of academic, as I believe your CPU is going to hold back any real upgrade you could make to your GPU. Actually, it depends, you state you have an R9 200 series GPU, but what is the model exactly?

PureAppleJuice · 27 Jun 2020 at 12:39

Low FPS, low-ish settings gamer really. Playing things like HOTS, AoE2 Definitive Edition, Total War: Warhammer. I do have an SSD.

I'm playing on a 22" monitor at 1680 x 1050. Truth be told, I'm not sure what specific model it is as the card is a hand me down!

It might be best for me to just ride out this system until I get my full upgrade if my CPU is likely to hold me back.

Zefan · 27 Jun 2020 at 12:43

At that resolution you're very likely to be CPU limited, even with a modern machine. I think those games are a little more CPU reliant than others tend to be as well but I'm not 100%.

Speccy should be able to tell you exactly what the hardware is.