What should I replace CPU or GPU?

[wildtangent]

Not sure If this belongs here or in technical support. If its in the wrong place please move.

 

Now on to my question. I am getting one computer upgrade for Christmas. Both my GPU and CPU are under recommended specs.

I have a Geforce 770 GTX with 4GB of GDDR 5 for a GPU, and an i5-2500 3.30 GHz running at 4.0 GHz

 

I have to mention I am running Fallout 4 on Ultra settings, and usually getting 60 FPS 

 

Which component would be the better one to swap out, that would give me the better performance boost?

 

Please feel free to leave suggestions for Model, type, brand of any product. 

 

Thanks in advance.

[nutluck]

Is that a 1155 socket cpu?

[Imperfection]

Not sure If this belongs here or in technical support. If its in the wrong place please move.

 

Now on to my question. I am getting one computer upgrade for Christmas. Both my GPU and CPU are under recommended specs.

I have a Geforce 770 GTX with 4GB of GDDR 5 for a GPU, and an i5-2500 3.30 GHz running at 4.0 GHz

 

I have to mention I am running Fallout 4 on Ultra settings, and usually getting 60 FPS 

 

Which component would be the better one to swap out, that would give me the better performance boost?

 

Please feel free to leave suggestions for Model, type, brand of any product. 

 

Thanks in advance.

 

If your running FO4 with 60 FPS sounds like you don't need an upgrade You will be limited in the CPU choice (Socket 1155 Sandy Bridge is discontinued, see Ebay ) unless you change motherboards which could mean changing other components to match (memory, power supply, etc.). If you change video cards make sure your power supply can deliver the proper power for the video card not just wattage but 12v rail and proper amperage on the 12v rail, etc. Had that happen to me.

 

Just my 2 cents

[Aya ॐ]

Your CPU is fine, I'd definitely recommend upgrading the GPU, either a 970 or r9 290 since you get your moneys worth out of them, but if you have the extra cash just get a 980. You CPU can handle pretty much any GPU without bottleneck, I believe.

[SkrimKnight]

770 is at least good enough to get you to the next release of GPUs which for nvidia is probably less than 5 months away.

 

You said your cpu is a i5-2500 but running at 4 GHz? That means its a i5-2500K which is perfectly fine.

 

 

[Bazinga]

Both are fine.

 

I'm running the game using a FX6300 processor (inferior to your cpu) and GTX 960 4GB card (comparable to the 770 GTX), and 8GB RAM.

 

Resolution 1920x1080, settings are nearly at max, only godray quality and shadows both set to high instead of ultra.

It's running smooth so far, and I still expect the game to get optimized a bit more so hopefully I'll be able to max out those 2 settings too.

[wildtangent]

Thanks for all the great info, and recommendations everyone. Maybe I'll just hold off on getting anything for a while. Maybe think about it again when something new comes out, or prices drop.

 

Thanks again

[Galacticat42]

A bit late to the discussion, but if you want to upgrade anything, wait until the new line of GPU architectures come out in late 2016. Nvidia promises it will be capable of 8-32GB of Vram, and of course AMD will put out their competition a month or two after that.

 

As for your CPU, 3.3ghz is a bit low for FO4, but if you have the heat sink to support the .7 OC, you'll be fine for another year or two. However if you don't, and it begins to overheat, I would recommend getting a new CPU/MOBO combination as the newest CPU's are octocores at 4.4 ghz.

 

[Sacremas]

Have an i5 2500k and a 980 4gig myself, running pretty smoothly. Since the motherboard needs replacement to upgrade processors I'm holding it off but I might OC it meanwhile. For now the main thing holding me back is the RAM, with ENBoost able to handle large amounts of RAM and use them I'm going to upgrade my 8 GB to either 12 or 16, most likely 16, I have two Corsair 4 Gigs now, getting two more then I'll be fairly well set for a while. Paying attention to the CPU marked, it's only this summer's generation of CPUs that have been a moderate step over the i5 2500 and i7 2600, before that it was a bit pointless to upgrade your CPU other than to save power as up until now chip developers have been focused on saving power for laptops rather than improve the CPU significantly.

[Arhon]

Sorry for hijacking it but when should be the best time to upgrade CPU?

 

I got an i5 660 @ 3.33GHz with a GTX 770 4GB VRAM and it runs fallout 4 on stable 60 FPS.

 

Out of my whole Desktop I only need to upgrade my CPU cause that's a damn ancient Dual-Core, the only problem i am facing is I dont know when is the best time to buy a new CPU(Reason for me asking is because I dont know if new CPU are coming out next summer)

[Guest MonsterFish]

'Upgrading' a CPU isn't as simple as switching it out. There are different sockets for the motherboard that need to be looked at, they can change in size, depth and shape. Most radical of these changes is between contact and contactless. It used to be that the CPU would have to pins and the motherboard should have the contacts, now it's reverse so the motherboard has the pins and the CPU has the contacts.

 

An i5 660 is pretty old (2010) and has an equally old socket - FCLGA1156. The best I could find that would fit that socket is the i5 680. A lot of the newer ones will fit in an LGA2011. So if you want to upgrade your CPU it might mean also upgrading your motherboard.

[nutluck]

Sorry for hijacking it but when should be the best time to upgrade CPU?

 

I got an i5 660 @ 3.33GHz with a GTX 770 4GB VRAM and it runs fallout 4 on stable 60 FPS.

 

Out of my whole Desktop I only need to upgrade my CPU cause that's a damn ancient Dual-Core, the only problem i am facing is I dont know when is the best time to buy a new CPU(Reason for me asking is because I dont know if new CPU are coming out next summer)

 

Well Cybermonday is the best time to upgrade, which is the Monday after Thanksgiving in the US. There is a lot of stores that have big sales online then.

 

With that said though, as the poster above said. You will need a new a new motherboard if you want to make much of a upgrade. Depending if you want to get a 4 core, or a 6/8core. 4 cores are cheaper but have a different socket a 1150 for the last generation of them. While the 6/8 cores all use 2011 or 2011-v3.

 

Depending on how old your PC is you should check to make sure your things like the HDD uses Sata cables.

[Sacremas]

On such an old system you probably don't have an SSD? Short term that's the biggest boost that you will notice significantly without needing to change a lot of other things like your motherboard or your power supply, if you dont have an SSD now expect loading levels in Fallout 4 to be reduced to 1/10 of the time. Not all SSDs are built equally, I suggest you look for reviews and benchmarks and get one in the 500 gig area. Save your old HDD to use for storage of things that don't need quick access like music and other loose files, use your SSD to run the operating system and games.

[tallal]

Yes changing to a SSD is the most cost efective item if you are already at/above the minimum spec for cpu & memory.

Going better; well under skyrim the bigest improve to stability and performance for me was changing from a 1.5G graphic card to 4Gig the reduction in texture reloading stopped the slow down after cell switches and cut the CTD by more than 2x but how much F4 would benifit no telling (F4 seem to be alot more robust, still not 100% it is a beth game ) but once the CPU is supporting above the average threed count of the game then gain in cpu clock speeds won't linearly go to improvments due to disk/ram/graphic / threed messaging etc limitations.

 

[Sacremas]

Yes changing to a SSD is the most cost efective item if you are already at/above the minimum spec for cpu & memory.

Going better; well under skyrim the bigest improve to stability and performance for me was changing from a 1.5G graphic card to 4Gig the reduction in texture reloading stopped the slow down after cell switches and cut the CTD by more than 2x but how much F4 would benifit no telling (F4 seem to be alot more robust, still not 100% it is a beth game ) but once the CPU is supporting above the average threed count of the game then gain in cpu clock speeds won't linearly go to improvments due to disk/ram/graphic / threed messaging etc limitations.

 

If you are crashing due to graphics load then you have one unoptimized game. Check out my modding guide in my sig to see how to fix that in 5 mins via proper setup of ENBoost and SKSE.ini. Read the rest of the first page to eliminate all your crashes.

[BlueSkyMine]

Sorry for hijacking it but when should be the best time to upgrade CPU?

 

I got an i5 660 @ 3.33GHz with a GTX 770 4GB VRAM and it runs fallout 4 on stable 60 FPS.

 

Out of my whole Desktop I only need to upgrade my CPU cause that's a damn ancient Dual-Core, the only problem i am facing is I dont know when is the best time to buy a new CPU(Reason for me asking is because I dont know if new CPU are coming out next summer)

 

Skylake just came out in the last couple of months so there won't be a new one for a quite some time. So that's the 6XXX series on Intel socket LGA 1151.

 

Best time to upgrade? Whenever you have the money and feel like it. Tech moves too fast for you to wait out for the "better" deal barring being something like a month before the next launch.

[Arhon]

 

Sorry for hijacking it but when should be the best time to upgrade CPU?

 

I got an i5 660 @ 3.33GHz with a GTX 770 4GB VRAM and it runs fallout 4 on stable 60 FPS.

 

Out of my whole Desktop I only need to upgrade my CPU cause that's a damn ancient Dual-Core, the only problem i am facing is I dont know when is the best time to buy a new CPU(Reason for me asking is because I dont know if new CPU are coming out next summer)

 

Skylake just came out in the last couple of months so there won't be a new one for a quite some time. So that's the 6XXX series on Intel socket LGA 1151.

 

Best time to upgrade? Whenever you have the money and feel like it. Tech moves too fast for you to wait out for the "better" deal barring being something like a month before the next launch.

 

 

I see, good advice.

 

I saved around 1000 Euro just for upgrading my PC. (Best way to save is to put aside 5-10[or more depending how much money you make from your job] euro each day/week/month and you will have alot saved)

 

I will check Skylake thank you , also thanks the other people for their advice/info

[PrettyInBlack]

For gamers (!) there is no need to upgrade from Sandy Bridge, even the above mentioned Bloomfield is still ok. I have a 2500K too and run it non-OC since there would be no improvement for my games at all. So why waste energy and shorten it's lifetime?

 

In a german hardware mag they just did a test to proove, what we believed anyway: With a 980 Ti OC² there was no difference between a 6700K OC and a lousy FX 6300 at 1440P! Any less potent GPU like the popular 970/390 class egalizes the CPUs at 1080P allready. Todays games all (mostly) ask for pure GPU power.

 

It's a fact that nearly every game is limited by the GPU, as long as you have a decent 4C CPU (+SSD and 16GB RAM) and this won't change in the near future because most games nowadays are cross platform titles and the CPU's of XB1 and PS4 define the limits for the next years.

 

[Sacremas]

For gamers (!) there is no need to upgrade from Sandy Bridge, even the above mentioned Bloomfield is still ok. I have a 2500K too and run it non-OC since there would be no improvement for my games at all. So why waste energy and shorten it's lifetime?

 

In a german hardware mag they just did a test to proove, what we believed anyway: With a 980 Ti OC² there was no difference between a 6700K OC and a lousy FX 6300 at 1440P! Any less potent GPU like the popular 970/390 class egalizes the CPUs at 1080P allready. Todays games all (mostly) ask for pure GPU power.

 

It's a fact that nearly every game is limited by the GPU, as long as you have a decent 4C CPU (+SSD and 16GB RAM) and this won't change in the near future because most games nowadays are cross platform titles and the CPU's of XB1 and PS4 define the limits for the next years.

 

This would be true on any other gaming site but this one.

 

Skyrim and Fallout 4's Papyrus system relies HEAVILY on your processor power and doesn't care one shit for GPU, I don't know how Fallout 4's papyrus works yet (I hope it's better) but Skyrim is only able to run two scripts at any exact moment in time, so if three scripts want to run at the same time (and if you are running things like Sexlab Aroused, Wet & Cold, Frostfall, and any number of things that will be a guarantee) that leads to a stack dump that eats up your memory and lags down your game, REGARDLESS of GPU power, and this can very easily as well crash your game, if you crash a lot in Skyrim this is probably the source of 3/4 of your crashes on a heavy modded game. The only way to make this go smoother oher than taking out a large amount of scripted mods out of your game (as I have had to do with my i5 2500k) is to get a faster processor able to clear scripts faster through your Papyrus system. As such a faster processor contributes DIRECTLY to the stability of your game if you are modding it with scripted mods.

 

Note that this doesn't mean a GPU is less important, heavens no, in fact it can lessen the strain on your CPU a lot by taking care of the graphics related processign for it, but I have a GTX 980 and I still have issues with scripted mods on heavy setups.

[Selene69s]

Not sure If this belongs here or in technical support. If its in the wrong place please move.

 

Now on to my question. I am getting one computer upgrade for Christmas. Both my GPU and CPU are under recommended specs.

I have a Geforce 770 GTX with 4GB of GDDR 5 for a GPU, and an i5-2500 3.30 GHz running at 4.0 GHz

 

I have to mention I am running Fallout 4 on Ultra settings, and usually getting 60 FPS 

 

Which component would be the better one to swap out, that would give me the better performance boost?

 

Please feel free to leave suggestions for Model, type, brand of any product. 

 

Thanks in advance.

cpu=fine

gpu= fine but if u want to upgrade just sli another 770 if you can find between $100-200

1155 supports ivybridge

 

enb on a amd gpu=no support dont try it , it might work or it might not work well he has dropped support for amd in the past so its a sure thing he will on fallout 4 

[Sacremas]

Personally I prefer spending a little more on a single core GPU like an x80 series (actually specifically that as above is just a waste of money, the alternative is an x70 upgraded more often) than use SLI. SLI in Skyrim in particular has negative effects with the water and other ripple effects on both vanilla and many ENBs, and a lot of other games just don't support SLI at all. An x80  has no such negatives, will always work and you can wait 4+ generations of GPUs before upgrading it, so it's better to save for a year than buy a lesser one this year.

 

For me however the most negative part of a SLI is the amount of noise it creates. My computer is in my living room next to my TV (it's monitor), and the noise quite frankly distracts me from both games and movies, which is why I made sure to get a nearly completely soundproof case and ultra-silent large fans. This was a few years ago however, I don't know if SLI makes less noise now.