I am a former console gamer moving into the PC world during the middle of the steam summer sale...(Paycheck=gone). I built a medium budget PC that can handle most games on medium just fine but with a lot of stores near by me having cpu and gpu deals going on, I want to upgrade.
My specs:
Mobo: MSI H77MA-G43
CPU: Intel G2120
GPU: ASUS 7770 2gb
PSU: 600W Thermaltake
RAM: 16gb(2x8gb) Kingston HyperX @ 1600mhz
Hard Drive: 1TB WD Black
I am having a hard time as to where to go next. I wanted to upgrade to a i3 3220 or a i5 3450 but I also am considering upgrading the GPU. Is the CPU or the GPU really bottle necking my system? or should I upgrade both of them at the same time? If so, what other components should I look into?
The 7770 isn't really thattt bad.... but at least grab an i3 or an i5. Go with a new AMD chip if money is tight, they aren't bad looking from what I've seen.
The card is perfectly fine if you just want to game on medium graphics, as the others suggested the i3 and i5 are both decent chips to go for if you can afford them if not then the AMD offerings can do game perfectly fine at the settings your used (probably slightly better).
So
Intel
i3 3xxx series
i5 3xxx series
AMD
FX 4300
FX 6300
FX 8350 (not cheap but equally as good as the i5 for your needs)
AMD motherboards are generally cheaper with more features than the Intel options but the Intel chips usually have a slightly better performance in single thread applications.
PCI-e 3.0 isnt even required currently, there isnt anything that pushes the speeds of 2.0 yet (unless your benchmarking the crap out of a titan or something lol) and with a 7770 2.0 is ample.
Or you can wait till the last quarter of 2013 ish for the next gen AMD APU's that will probably support the 7770's in hybrid crossfire but this is speculation and the time could change.
Aslong as your cd drive (if u have one) and your HDD are both SATA that would be a nice build. The CPU is powerful enough to play all games about currently and the graphics card can play every game to a nice standard (dont be expecting ultra settings with huge FPS tho).
I would get an 8320 and use the saved money to buy a thermaltake ni5 from the thermaltake online store that would let you overclock it to 4.5-4.7ghz easily for the same price as the 8350, also the nic5 is the best new cooler for $50
Its a little bit pointless overclocking an 8320 for this guy, from what hes written he got no need to overclock and the GPU hes got wouldnt massively benifit from overclocking.
Overclocking is fine don't get me wrong but theres little point in doing it just for the sake of it. To many people do it and think its the thing to do when infact all you get is a slightly faster PC with a bit more FPS at the cost of huge amounts of heat,reducing the life span of the CPU and spending ages finding stable voltages etc.
I just discovered my local Frys has a wd green 1tb for 64 bucks so im going to grab one tomorrow for use as a media drive. then in a month i can grab either the 8320 or the 8350 along with that gigabyte mobo I looked into.