Looking to upgrade

[Zantetzou]

hi guys.

I am currently running a Phenom II X4 955 and i was looking to upgrade but i have no idea which I should choose.
My motherboard is a Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P.

I have a budget of around £200 any suggestions would be great

 

[snips86x]

What is the rest of your system?

 

[Zantetzou]

Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor(4CPUs), ~3.6GHz
Memory: 4GB Corsair XMS3
Video Card: ASUS AMD HD 6970
Operating System: Windows 8.1
Motherboard: Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P
PSU: OCZ Stealth Extreme 2 700W
OTHER: NZXT Phantom white Case, Corsair H60 v2 watercooler

 

[CEUOTC]

Try this, put your OS on SSD, the i3-4150 will have stronger single thread performance as well as being slightly faster in multithread and memory intensive applications.

The Z motherboard will give you an upgrade path down the road, as you already have an h60 V2 cooler (Hope you kept all the bits) this can be fitted instead of the retail cooler that comes with it.

Your 4gb of ram will be compatible with the motherboard as it is DDR3.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-4150 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £89.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97M-DS3H Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £74.99
1 x Crucial MX100 128GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT128MX100SSD1) £56.99
Total : £231.56 (includes shipping : £8.00).



For a little bit more.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4460 3.20GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £134.99
1 x Gigabyte H97M-HD3 Intel H97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £67.99
1 x Crucial MX100 128GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT128MX100SSD1) £56.99
Total : £269.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).



Quad core i5 Haswell refresh and H97 motherboard.

 

[Zantetzou]

would both of these give me a good boost for gaming?.
At present the only game i cannot run without low FPS is Arma 3, i THINK its due to the game being CPU intensive, also what about AMD CPUS?

 

[ShivP]

Yeah, the Arma series are notoriously CPU intensive, I have an i5 4670k and that would be a slight bit better than that 4460 at stock, but still comparable. It plays Arma at really quite decent FPS

 

[Zantetzou]

would this setup work well?

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £173.99
1 x Gigabyte H97M-HD3 Intel H97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £67.99]
Total : £241.98 (includes shipping : £8.00).

 

[CEUOTC]

Yes the Haswell chip will run in an H/Z97 motherboard.

You may want to get a Z motherboard to overclock, it is possible to overclock on an H97 motherboard, however Intel have hinted that a bios update or code update in windows will remove this.

Look at the:

Intel Core i5-4690 3.50GHz If you are not going to overclock.

Or you could wait for Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz if you are going to overclock in the future.