Is it worth upgrading this CPU?

mr_t_____ · 12 Sep 2014 at 13:34

Hi,

I currently have a fairly old PC that i use for gaming. The current spec is

AMD Phenom B50 (an Athlon II X3 450 with the 4th core unlocked)
8GB DDR3 Ram
Nvidia 750ti 2GB
64Gb SSD + 1Tb hard disk.
350W PSU

I use a 1080p projector so don't need anything higher than that and i'm also not that fussed about running on ultra settings, medium is fine and i'm more interested in hitting 1080p/60fps.

To get a bit more life out of this PC i fairly recently upgraded the GPU to the 750ti as it was a low power part and meant i didn't need to change PSU as well. My next upgrade was going to be the CPU/motherboard but i notice in games the CPU cores (in task manager) never seem to go above 60-70% utilisation or about 80% in BF4

Is it safe to assume that despite being quite slow that this CPU isn't bottlenecking the games and therefore there is no point in upgrading it until i upgrade the GPU as well?

As you can probably guess i'm on an extremely tight budget so want to reuse as many components as possible and not have to upgrade too much in one go.

Thanks

Hagar · 12 Sep 2014 at 13:55

Probably the 750Ti is still the bottleneck if the CPU core utilisation is 60-80%.

You could experiment with running as a three core part and see if there is any noticable difference. Or overclocking the CPU.

mr_t_____ · 12 Sep 2014 at 16:00

Thanks for the reply.

This £50 CPU from 4 years ago has served well so far so i'm quite pleased its still got some life in it.

CinderzFTW · 13 Sep 2014 at 16:12

depends on your motherboard... if its an 700 or 900 series chipset, get an 6300... i have the 6350 and upgraded from the phenom 965 and got an instant boost in performance...

Plus, might want to think about updating the PSU... you are getting a bit close with that 750ti to 350w... get a nice 550 watter and your set to go

mr_t_____ · 13 Sep 2014 at 16:53

Sadly its an AM3 motherboard and not AM3+

FatRakoon · 14 Sep 2014 at 09:26

Have you looked for a BIOS upgrade? See what CPUs you could get?
The number of times I have grabbed a CPU and stuffed it into a Mobo without thinking is incredible, and most of the time, they still work even when they should not.
Sometimes the Mobo will work the CPU, but tell you its somethign its not, but a BIOS update may sort it out?
Not guaranteed, but still....