Game machine upgrade advice

Evil-I

Evil-I

Evil-I

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Joined
20 Apr 2003
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1,316
Location
Gloucestershire
Hi All,

Been asked to advise a friends son on what upgrade for his gaming PC. One of his friends has suggested an upgrade to a core i5 4690 in a Gigabyte GA-B85-HD3 motherboard and she has asked my opinion (straight away I'd suggest a different motherboard so its SLI capable...).

So current specs are:
AMD FX 4100 running at stock 3.6ghz
8 Gb Patriot RAM
Gigabyte GTX 760 GPU

I'm waiting for details as to what games he plays at what resolution, but given he seems to have an OEM CPU cooler which is clogged with dirt and dust I reckon it's likely to be throttling anyway?

Would a decent cooler and overclock of existing CPU be worth a shot first? Because given the money he wants to spend on CPU and motherboard, would a GTX 970 be a better bang for his buck?

All advice appreciated!

E-I
 
What is their budget?
Wouldn't bother with an SLI capable board and be more interested in getting a Z97 board and a clockable chip instead.

If the budget is aiming towards a 4690k & GTX 970, that's all that will be needed for a long time, the 970's are powerhouses.
 
Based on what he has suggested his budget is probably about £300 hence why I'm wondering whether it's an either or situation.

So would he be better off swapping his gtx760 with the GTX 970 and just over-clocking his existing CPU? Or will the AMD CPU (even overclocked) bottleneck a GTX 970?

And yes, GTX 970's are beasts.... I've got two ;-)

Thanks for the response,

E-I
 
The FX-4100 is going to be a bottleneck for sure, but the 970 will bring the biggest jump in performance compared to a CPU upgrade.

However depending on what games they want to play and what resolution, a lower spec card might be suffice leaving more money to work with in other areas.

A heatsink and an SSD might be worthy upgrades alongside a GPU.
Depends what performance they're after.
 
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