Friend's budget build

[Thresh25]

A friend of mine has a TA970XE Biostar motherboard and an AMD(fx) 4100 quad core processor 3.6ghz. He is getting a 750ti from a friend for $50. He basically wants to play CIV, BF, and maybe total war on low-medium settings.

He was considering upgrading his processor to one of these:

AMD FX-8320 Vishera 8-Core 3.5 GHz (4.0 GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 125W FD8320FRHKBOX Desktop Processor - Newegg.com

AMD FX-8350 Black Edition Vishera 8-Core 4.0 GHz (4.2 GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 125W FD8350FRHKBOX Desktop Processor - Newegg.com

Will he even really see much of a difference? I know that gaming isn't done on 8 cores, so with the small increase in clock speed I wasn't sure if he'd actually see a bump in performance.

Thanks all

 

[PP Mguire]

There's a decent amount of IPC increase from Bulldozer to Vishera, and a 400MHz increase at that. Civ and Total War should see a good increase, but ultimately will be limited by GPU performance.

 

[JahCunha]

That GPU Will bottleneck the cpu... wouldt he be better of with a i3 4170? Or the I5 4460? Or even the 6300? Because throwing 180 euros into something that he wont be able to take full advantage of is not the best Choice.

 

[PP Mguire]

For what he wants, the CPU would be better since I'm assuming the GPU is already purchased before this was posted. An i3 6100 would be the best choice, but requires a complete platform change as would moving to any Intel setup making it more costly in the end.

 

[JahCunha]

Yeah tht is True. I just felt he would be Wasting 60 bucks and The fx 6300 would do the work.

 

[PP Mguire]

Yeah tht is True. I just felt he would be Wasting 60 bucks and The fx 6300 would do the work.

He wants as much CPU power as he can afford when playing Total War. It'd be way more expensive going with an i5 than simply sticking with an 8320.

 

[JahCunha]

Yes it would cause of the board change. But I preferia rto pay a bit more for an I5 than an FX and get close performance for better power consumption.

 

[PP Mguire]

Power consumption isn't really an issue. An i5 will cost a minimum here of 189 plus the cost of a board. The CPU alone is over the cost of an 8320E which consumes only a little more than a Haswell i5. In the case of penny pinching and the person already owning an AMD platform it just makes sense.

 

[JahCunha]

Well If money is the problem yeah, go for the best price / performance option.

 

[steve10765]

I've had the FX 8320, no need to waste your money on the 8350 if you can just easily overclock the 8320 to it's speed, or close to it. Zip tie a 120mm fan to the stock heatsink and call it a day! That's what I did anyway. 4.6GHZ FX 8320
I'd get the 8300, or 8320e and just overclock them a little bit to 8350 speeds, unless I'm mistaken all 8000 FX CPU's have the same heatsinkss anyway.