Worse bottleneck

Hardware Build a PC
1

so i wanna upgrade my old pc and i have only $300 and im not going to get much more any time soon. so heres my rig:

  • core2quad q6600 @2.4GHz (cannot overclock due to motherboard not supporting it)
  • ati radeon 3870x2
  • about 6.4 TB worth of storage
  • win 7 professional x86
  • 4GB DDR2 @unknown clock
  • 1440x900 monitor(i game at various resolutions)

so i was thinking on upgrading the graphics card and than in a few years i can upgrade bit by bit to get a good system. and than keep going from there.

i know a lot about hardware so don't mind with the tech talk.

2

I would recommend upgrading to a good mid-range card like an R9-270 or 270X and use the remaining cash for an SSD for the OS. That should speed things up nicely and breathe some new life into your system. Maybe grab 8GB of ram too, if possible.

3

i could get a 260x and maybe a new mobo so i can overclock if anybody knows any good lga 775 mobos for a good price and new

 

4

i would say just save some more money and do a  cpu + mobo + ram and gpu upgrade at once. if you have 300 to spend now, and you could save another 100 then you should be able to do that.

If you buy a new gpu now, it still will get bottlenecked. and a 260X will be not enough anymore next year.

5

This ^--- http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2L0Im

$122 extra, brand new pc

6

Core 2 quad can still perform really well. It's about on the A10 level in terms of CPU power. Get a 270 or 270X. That's gonna give you good performance while being on the lower borderline of bottlenecking the c2q. Also, you can upgrade later to a new PC and just bring the card over.

7

if im going to get a new pc i would just save it till i have about $600 so i can do my productivity stuff to i was using this pc as a media center/ gaming pc/ workstaion/ htpc so i would need to wait about another year or so and im not able to play some games now so i need to upgrade my gpu but i have a core2quad and its going to bottleneck nearly every modern gpu so im wondering what would be the best bottleneck to deal with a cpu bottleneck or a gpu bottleneck

8

oh and i cant play bf3 multiplayer due to the cpu and cant play some newer games because of my gpu

9

What ever flavor of gear you prefer, Its time to upgrade your entire rig. Look for some barebones with good upgrade paths.

10

no barebones for $300 that can play my games

11

You could build something like this for around $300: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2LYre

Re-use your existing case and hard drives.

Will allow you to play all or most of your games at low-medium settings until you can save up to buy a more powerful discreet graphics card later on. 

12

i don't want a new build right now i was wondering would it be better to get something like this

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-r9270xgaming2g

or something like this and use the other parts I'm currently using

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/

and this is all just to jump start my upgrade process

13

don't buy a 270x. get the 270. it's cheaper and oc the same. i have the msi 270 @ 1200mhz(1225mV) and 1500mhz for the ram. the msi cooler is amazing. it's stays 58C (20c room) in my fractal r4 99% usage in kombuster. i have 6 fans thought but still. it's good.

 

14

I would think the rest of your existing system would hold back the R9-270, now that I think about it more.

Upgrading your system now with something like the build I suggested, would lay the necessary foundation to step up to a more powerful GPU and something like the R9-270 would be a pretty good match for the A10.