Help regarding upgrade

danjama

danjama

danjama

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Joined
24 Apr 2011
Posts
265
Hi all, don't laugh but i'm still getting good use out of my very old build, having only done a few minor upgrades, maintenance and minor repairs here and there. I don't really play all the newest games so it has served me well. However, I've now come up against a game that is pushing it a little and causing low frames, Assetto Corsa Competizione. I've heard that the game is quite CPU intensive so am thinking that's the issue. I guess i'm wondering if there's a CPU worth swapping in to my motherboard, as I don't have the budget for a full build right now and probably won't for a while as our first baby and our house are taking priority. My current specs are AMD 1090t, radeon r9 290 4gb, 8gb 3200 ddr3, motherboard i can't quite remember the exact model but it was a very good board at the time. It's air cooled so only boosts to 3.8ghz when playing games. ACC runs fine until in a race where there are lots of AI cars on track, i'm guessing this is the load on the CPU running all the cars. I can just about get through a race but it can be quite choppy.

Am I right in thinking there's not much that will replace my 1090t that will outperform it significantly, and so i'll need to look at MB/CPU/RAM upgrades?

Any and all help appreciated, in the meantime i'll be getting myself up to speed as I haven't built a PC for over 10 years.
 
I think it's jolly brilliant that you've made your hardware last and avoided the upgrade itch.

Congratulations on your new baby!

It's an interesting time to upgrade as new CPUs, a new AMD socket, new GPUs and a new RAM standard are all coming at the same time later this year. This overlaps some unhappy world events that have caused a lot of long-lasting price spikes.

If it were me I'd be looking to move to AM4 from a mix of b-grade stock and the Member's Marketplace and see if I could recoup some of the cost from selling the old parts on an auction website.

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £79.99 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

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For a CPU you're looking at anything from £40-£60 for a low end (1200, 1300x, 1500x, 3100) but they come up less often these days.

If you wanted to move soon then you're more looking at £100 for a 3600.

For my money you'll soon have a lot less time to game and you're much better off waiting another 5 years until the little one is in school.
 
danjama said:
Am I right in thinking there's not much that will replace my 1090t that will outperform it significantly, and so i'll need to look at MB/CPU/RAM upgrades?
Click to expand...

Pretty much.

I'm afraid you might want to look into how your graphics card will handle a modern motherboard. It may well have UEFI support so in that case you'll be fine, but might be best to check before you try to boot it up without a spare PC.

I'd go with a 12100F or 12400F, if you have the budget. A 3600 as suggested above is a good choice too, you may even still be able to find a tomahawk max or mortar new for £60 (they were that price for ages).

You could try overclocking the CPU, just for a little bit, to see if it really does help. You could also open it up with task manager (or other monitoring software), or run afterburner's overlay, to see if the problematic places are consistent with the CPU being pegged.
 
Hi all. Thought I'd come back and say thank you for your advice and update the thread with a conclusion!

Ultimately, after months of frustration and hesitating, I just decided to do a mostly new build. The 1090t served me very well, I'd love to know how many hours I had on it. I had a load of spare car parts in the garage which I sold and basically paid for my new build but I do still need to upgrade the GPU at some point. Although I don't have much gaming time right now with the little one, it does mean I just need the time I have to be enjoyable and stress free.

In the end I went for:

MSI forge 100m case
Amd 5600
Asus Rog strix b550-f
Kingston fury 16gb 3200 ddr4
Crucial 1tb p3 nvme sad

And I reused my r9 290, 2tb hd for storage and 700w PSU. I'm absolutely chuffed with how it's performing even with the old 290 chugging along. I'm looking at various options for GPU, either a new 6600 or a used 2060 super.

But thank you all for your advice and kind words. Must frequent this forum more :)
 
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danjama said:
I can certainly hold out until then as I'm getting decent enough fps in the games I play. Cheers!
Click to expand...
With a newer gpu your motherboard will will be able to use smart acess memory.

www.windowscentral.com

How to enable AMD's Smart Access Memory (SAM) on your PC

AMD Smart Access Memory (SAM) is a free performance-boosting feature that comes with Radeon RX 6000 GPUs. Here's what you need in your PC and how to turn it on.
www.windowscentral.com www.windowscentral.com
 
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