Help Me Upgrade My PC

[Mazty]

Squilliam said:

Mazty said:

Squilliam said:

Mazty said:

Squilliam said:
I would say just upgrade the graphics chip and wait until you have enough money and do the whole rest of the system next year.

No point. A better GPU would be throttled by that CPU. 2.6Ghz?? As a lot of RTS' are dependant on a good CPU, he should look into getting a whole new mobo setup. IMO save up for a good i5 as that'll last you for a long time. 

This is what I said.

No it's not. You said:
" upgrade the graphics chip "

That would be a waste of time as anything he upgrades to would either be useless or be throttled so badly that he wouldn't see an increase in performance. He shouldn't upgrade the GPU UNTIL he's upgraded his CPU. 

Why would it be a waste of time? I run a similar system with the only difference being 200Mhz and Phenom II vs Athlon X4. You're GPU/CPU limited in different parts of a scene so unless your CPU is hopelessly outdated you can still improve things with a stronger CPU and an Athlon II X4 is pretty decent still.

I'm not 100% with the older architecture but I think the Athlon X4 II series is more likely to bottlekneck a modern GPU then a phenom II. I have a friend who was getting massively bottleknecked by his Phenom I series when using a HD5770 (talking 20+fps less then what he should be getting) and so because of that being an entry level gamer card I'd recommend rehauling the pc starting with the cpu *if* my idea that the athlon X4 II architecture is equal to the phenom I series. If it's equivalent to the phenom II series then yes, he will get benefits from a better gpu.