What would you upgrade first?

nails666

nails666

nails666

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Hi all, a general question to you all out there on what I should try and upgrade first. My current system is in my sig and was built very recently as a stop gap solution until I get the finances sorted for some upgrades.
Basically my choice is the age old cpu or gpu upgrade. Now normally the gpu is the best choice but in my case it's not so clean cut as my cpu is only a dual core Pentium K (oc'd to 4.6GHz) and I'm running xfired 6950's. I suspect that the gpu's are already going to be a bit bottle necked by the pentium so my guess is that any further gpu power (probably a 290) won't really result in much more performance?
If I go for the cpu it'll probably be a 4790K which will remove any current bottleneck but I'm guessing it still wont be that much extra performance as the 6950's are getting on a bit now.

So if it was your system what you go for first?

Ross
 
as far as i know mate, let's say you get a 290 or any amd card, you can use mantle which then uses your gpu power for games instead your cpu alone so your cpu wouldn't be a bottleneck, hopefully someone comes in and explains it better than i have because i'm new to this but thats what i think mantle does. mantle is in foetus mode as far as i know though.
 
My money - save more and upgrade both the CPU and GPU at the same time.

The K CPU is a surprisingly capable processor when paired with a decent GPU. Check out the images below - the GPU used is a 6gb Titan.

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The CPU doesn't hinder the Titan drastically. The other thing you have to bear in mind is the i5 in the benchmarks is running at stock.

So assuming you're gaming at 1920x1080 and you have cash burning a hole in your pocket for only one upgrade, get the best GPU you can afford, in my most humble of opinions.
 
Cheers guys, yeah overall I've been very impressed by the Pentium considering it's cost. I'd forgotten about Mantle to be honest as there's not currently any games with it that I play but it's looking like that will be starting to improve soon. As you say Ex, saving up enough to both at once would be the best bet and I'm hoping I can make it last until Broadwell and the new Nvidia/AMD cards are released and get something then. Just curious if it does become a problem playing a new game where the money would have the greatest impact.
 
OMG. If I were you, I'd definately change CPU. Not GPU, which is something like 7970/280X:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1665100

I don't know what other people think about having Pentium K and a card like 290/290X ? Screenshots from Tomshardware are just offline section, with benchmarking background, in real online gaming dual CPU, even overclocked, simply su*ks. Sorry Gregory.

There's a massive difference between oced Pentium K and i7 (which is better than i5 for Crossfiring as well, but in case of stronger cards - so it might play a role in the future once gfx card changed):
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-pentium-g3258-review

and it's quite obvious that main goal in all upgrades is to have BALANCED hardware at CPU-GPU level, not UNBALANCED - which simply means a part to be upgraded is the weakest part.

From an experience I'd say you will notice minFPS gain (in CPU upgrade) which is someting that people name "gaming fluency" + some slight maxFPS gain due to so called "bottlenecking", but if you change just GPU, minFPS remains at the same (roughly) level. So you can do you own testing - nobody knows which games you play - and using FRAPS make a logs from your favourite games and then see - what is minFPS level and is it acceptable - which simply gives you the best answer for your question.
 
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Yeah the system as it currently is isn't well balanced and upping the graphics will certainly push it more that way. Long term I will definitely do both and get it even again just a matter of which bit gets done first when the cash becomes available. I think head says cpu but heart always wants a flashier gpu :)
 
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