i3-7100 or something else

[nheather]

Hi,

Helping my son upgrade his PC for Christmas. It is used predominantly for gaming - he mostly plays first person RPGs like Dark Souls, Elder Scrolls, Witcher etc.

The main aim is to improve the graphics - currently a HD 7950, looking at a GTX 1060 or a RX 780.

But he is keen to refresh his system and would like to move from AMD to Intel for the CPU.

Looking to keep the spend reasonable.

He currently has an AMD FX-6300 Black Edition (running stock) - that was a hand-me-down from me.

I'm quite out of touch, not having done any upgrades for 3-4 years. But reading up the i3-7100 seems to be recommended as a good bang for the buck for gaming.

So some questions

1) Is the i3-7100 good or should I he be looking at something else - not too much extra money though

2) Looking at performance the i3-7100 is better than FX-6300 but is it enough to make it worthwhile

Appreciate your help,

Cheers,

Nigel

 

[nheather]

Thanks for the tip about the RAM. Assuming that wasn't going to be changed but just seen comments about needing DDR4.

That changes things, he currently has 8GB of DDR3.

So that would be more cost making the CPU upgrade looking less attractive - changes the CPU is fine, having to change the MoBo was expected but annoying as it is dead money, and having to change the RAM aswell is disappointing.

Cheers,

Nigel

 

[nheather]

Hi,

The primary aim is to improve the screen refresh in games (predominantly first person RPG type games).

To be able to run on single HD monitor (1080P) with full settings at a decent frame rate.

I imagine that this is mostly down to the graphics card.

However, my son was interested in upgrading the CPU to improve the overall responsiveness.


Now I'm beginning to think, as Journey has suggested, to just get a new graphics card and see how it goes from there.

When we were thinking CPU + MoBo + GFX we were considering somewhere between £400 and £500


If we have to buy DDR4 memory that will push the budget up by another £80+

It's not so much the money (though that is a consideration) but fact that the MoBo and Memory would be best part of £200 and they feel like dead money - not giving him anything he doesn't have already (other than to support a new CPU) - the MoBO isn't to bad but the memory just feels like a waste - or is DDR4 much better than DDR3?

Cheers,

Nigel