What should i upgrade. gpu or cpu

[elmorejohn46]

If you running at 3.8g then i would get a GPU first ,you will see the biggest increase in games because you will be able to run at higher details.I would not worry about getting a 6 core ,just get you a good four core. The Phenom II x4 965 Black edition is a good one to get and the price is just $110 and it multipler is unlocked.Then you could get a HD6870..The 965 phenom II should overclock to 4gig to 4.4gig .But I had a i7920 clocked at 4.2gig and everyone said I should upgrade my CPU before I did my GPU .with a i7-3820 clocked at 4.2gigs I only saw arounds 5fps faster in most games,but I can run the 3820 to 4.8gigs

[terrybear]

Originally Posted by YoungMan

There's only a handful of games out there that actually make use of more than 2 cores, and hardly anyone plays those games. Linus did an episode for some of the popular games with CPU cores. Basically, anything above 2 threads (yes, even 1 core with hyperthreading) has no significant impact on gaming performance. It's all within margin of error.

Yes but ya forget if there ONLY running the game NOTHING ELSE IN THE BACKGROUND then the argument might be valid .... but there are ALOT of game engines out there that DO utilize more then 2 threads/cores. BUT like I said in my post, if the person plans to run anything else in the background while gaming ... those extra core's will take that up & the core's for the gaming wont be overtaxed.

Resources are resources, the more you have the better.

[TedShackley]

If its mainly a gaming rig, you don't need an x6, I'd just get a x4 955, they are still a solid chip, OC pretty well and must be pretty cheap these days, especially 2nd hand

As to which 1st, most games still only use 2 cores and 3.8 is a good OC, not knowing your budget or plans I'd try some 6870 or 6950, I used a single 6950 with an x4 955 and it worked great, then switched to i5-2500 and got another 6950

Or just save longer and tough it out and do full upgrade MB+CPU then worry about ram which is pretty cheap anyways


edit: no real CF issues for me, but I half to use CCC 12.3 because later ones messed up my skyrim, but 1 6950 is very good 95% of the time in skyrim. As for CPU usage skyrim hardly uses any on my i5 arcoss all cores. BC2 and BF3 will love 4 cores though, but 6 is really not needed for typical usage.