Upgrading

[LFarish]

Hello everyone,

I have recently bought a GTX 960 (Palit Jetstream) because it is probably the best 1080p graphics card for me and a 970 or above is pretty much overkill.

I really only play CS:GO and other games such as H1Z1 and Bioshock etc.

I am looking to upgrade in other areas because at the moment most games run fine but only CS:GO runs at above 60fps constantly.

If anyone has suggestions on what parts that would be good! I have a budget of probably £200....

GPU: gtx Palit Jetstream 960
CPU: AMD X4 750K black edition
MOBO: Gigabyte F2A75M-D3H
RAM: 8GB (unknown manufacturer)
Power Supply: 600W Cooler Master

Any help would be appreciated

[pastymuncher]

Without changing socket, probably to Intel, which would cost more than £200 if you wanted to be able to overclock (unless you went G3258 which is only dual core along with a suitable motherboard) there's not a lot of options for you. Is your 750k overclocked at all? Do you have a ssd?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Bioshock should be fine? Might be worth seeing if the CPU is overheating?? The stock cooler is not very good and also is the RAM in dual channel??

Regarding upgrades,you can get a Skylake Core i3 or Core i5 with a motherboard for that price and re-use the DDR3 you have.

[LFarish]

I have an Samsung Evo 240Gb ssd and no my CPU isnt overclocked. My CPU runs at no more than 50 degrees. Id be willing to spend more than the busget if i got a massive increase in performance.

However i dont know whether it is worth waiting for the new Zen core AMD CPU's next year

[LFarish]

The CPU only goes at 50 degrees max and no itrs single channel but im getting another stick of 8GB within the next couple weeks.

Ive heard about getting a second hand ATX board with a second hand Xeon CPU that is equivelant to a i7 4770 is possible but i dont know what would be similar specs to an i7

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You can get a Skylake Core i3,motherboard and DDR4 RAM for around £200,or a Skylake Core i5 and a DDR3 capable motherboard for that price,so £200 is plenty of money to get a decent performance uplift.

However,even with a Core i7 3770/Xeon E3 1230 V2 and a GTX960,I cannot always get 60FPS in games like Planetside2 and that is at 1680X1050.

Edit!!

I have a IB based Xeon E3 1230 V2 which I got for around £100. The Haswell equivalent will be the Xeon E3 1230 V3.

[LFarish]

I think the only game that I would be really taxed on that I play is either BF4 or H1Z1, I would like to be able to play them on high at 60 fps and i know my 960 will hope fine I think its my CPU massively holding me back so I dont know what the minimum for that kind of game is.

Intel is gonna be the way to go atm but Im a bit stuck on what I would need for high settings on these games as a bare minimum

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This might help with H1Z1:

http://www.hardwarepal.com/h1z1-benchmark-performance/

[LFarish]

So do you think its my CPU holding me back for H1Z1 since I hvae better specs for the GPU than the benchmark and the RAM doesnt make a difference as 8gb is never used?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

So do you think its my CPU holding me back for H1Z1 since I hvae better specs for the GPU than the benchmark and the RAM doesnt make a difference as 8gb is never used?

Its the same engine as Planetside 2 so is quite CPU intensive - it does use upto 4 threads but AFAIK it does perform better still on Intel CPUs.

However,I can still see dips in framerates down to even 30FPS during firefights in the game.