Advice needed on a upgrade.

[simonlodge]

Been thinking about upgrading my Processor for awhile now.. my budget is kinda small around £90

I currently use an old AMD Athlon II X4 640 Socket AM3 3GHz 2MB L2 Cache

I am thinking of upgrading to either one of these two if you think it would be really worth it:

AMD FX-4 4100 Black Edition 4 Core 3.6Ghz Socket AM3+ 8MB L3 Cache
AMD FX-4 4100 Black Edition 4 Core 3.6Ghz Socket AM3.. | Ebuyer.com

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition 3.4GHz Socket AM3 6MB L3 Cache Cache
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition 3.4GHz Socket AM3.. | Ebuyer.com

Will also be upgrading my Gfx card in January so any recommendations would not go a miss

 

[ganjiry]

Ello Simonlodge and welcome to seven forums
I'd say to go with the 965 black edition. I used to have one and its a really good cpu especially as they are now only about £65.
I'm pretty sure its much better than the fx 4100
As for your graphics card it all depends on budget

 

[simonlodge]

thankyou ganjiry many have said to stay away from the bulldozer series of chips till the new ones come out maybe nexy year aye.. I think i will go for the 965 black edition and as for my gfx card i wanna spend around the £200 mark

I was thinking about this one..

Asus GTX 660 DirectCU II OC 2GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI.. | Ebuyer.com OR would the Ti version be a better deal for the extra £30?

Currently using GTX 260 and also have a spare AMD HD 6790 doing nothing lol.. do ya think this is a good gpu to go with my phenom core? Many thanks

 

[ganjiry]

No probs
The Bulldozer is still a good cpu. I jave an Fx 6100 myself. I just think for your budget the 965 is the better option, Others may say otherwise and this is only from what i've read.
for an extra £20 ish you could get a 7950 Components » Graphics Cards - AMD » ATI HD 7950 Series - Overclockers UK

 

[simonlodge]

Not sure about the 7950 for some reason i have alot of tech issues or maybe just bad luck with ati cards in my system (XFX HD 6790) so that would be abit of a gamble for me cos i don't wanna waste my money.. works fine at first then games will start crashing to desktop and freezing.. also my monitor would go blank for no reason i can think of.. ever since i put my GTX 260 in my machine everything has worked fine, pretty strange tbh.

Here is the old thread.. give it a read if you wish

http://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-debugging/230042-all-my-games-freeze-crash-desktop-plz-help.html

 

[ganjiry]

Ello mate
Yeah everyone has their favourites enit. I've only ever had AMD Gpu's and Cpu's untill now and have never had any kind of problem with them. I know they used to have a lot of bad drivers before i started messing with pc's but they do make very good cards now and have sorted the driver issue's.

From what i've read both cards perform about the same at stock but the ATI card performs well when overclocked.
The resolution you play at will also make a difference with which cards will be better.

I found this in another forums

If you mainly play BF3, don't plan to overclock but plan to upgrade in a year or so I would definitely go with the 660ti. However if you do overclock and BF3 isn't your focus while also planning to hold off upgrading for 2-3 years then a 7950 is a much better choice IMO. With a good non-reference cooling you can easily surpass 7970 speeds which will beat an OC'd 660ti in most scenarios and is more akin to an OC 670. Gaming at higher resolutions only furthers the gap if thats in your future plans

Its all down to preference's really

 

[simonlodge]

cheers mate, i like to run my games in 1080p (1920x1080) but i never run with AA i don't really see the point at that high of a resolution cos it will just take more fps from me and i like my 60 frames per second and i now have virtual sync on all my games.. trying to gear my pc up for crysis 3 lol and i also want a pc capable of running next gen games that come out over the next say 3 years xD

 

[Pedroc1999]

have you thought about the fx-4300 instead?

 

[simonlodge]

So many to choose from lol..

Phenom 965, Fx 4100, Fx 4300 and i also been looking at Fx 6100 these are all within my budget but the real question is which one will i get the best performance out of plus to think of it i would want this cpu for atleast 3+years down the road. As I've read ppl have warned me of the fx chips becos apparently they underperformed in benchmarks but tbh benchmarks mean little to me its about multitasking and gaming for me.. I think when they first came out they was alot of driver issues since then i think AMD have fixed most of the problems and I'm also looking into going windows 8 in the new year so maybe the fx chips will be more efficient then, u may warn me of from windows 8 i know lol but I like tweaking new stuff what can i say.

 

[ganjiry]

yup plenty of choice's for you. I have the fx 6100 myself and its not let me down yet. I've not seen it maxed out or near max with anything but stress tests

 

[simonlodge]

Think im gonna get this one.. AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail [FD8320FRHKBOX] If i overclock it like crazy it will outperform your fx 4300 and the 8350

 

[ganjiry]

Nice 1
Just make sure to check that your board fully supports it and if you need a bios update or not. you'll find this on your mobo manufacturers website.
Its a 6100 i have but your right the 8320 will out perform it even before u oc it probably

 

[simonlodge]

this is my mobo.. ASUS - Motherboards- ASUS M5A78L/USB3 i did a bios update in February of this year but will do another one just to be on the safe side

 

[ganjiry]

heres the cpu support list which says you'll need bios 1401 ASUS - Motherboards- ASUS M5A78L/USB3

 

[simonlodge]

cheers mate done it

 

[ganjiry]

No probs and good luck with your upgrade

 

[simonlodge]

cheers mate btw i never had a SSD before are these any good compared to a standard Hard Drive for gaming? http://www.ebuyer.com/278645-ocz-240gb-agility-3-ssd-agt3-25sat3-240g

 

[ganjiry]

Yes they certainly are. An ssd will give you better boot times, faster loading times for any program installed on it and faster loading times for games installed on it. You won't get any ingame performance increase though.
I have the 120Gb version of that drive and could'nt be any happy with it.
When using a HDD i had a restart time of around 49 seconds. By restart time i mean i used a bat file that shuts down/restarts and times how long it takes untill your back at desktop. With the ssd the time went down to 35 seconds.
You will notice the difference believe me but not ingame performance