Cheapest useful upgrade for PhII 965

[Hubb1e]

I'm looking for the cheapest useful CPU upgrade for a PhII 965. I run it at 3.6ghz on the stock heatsink.

The rest of the system is as follows.
Antec mATX case with Earthwatts 380W PSU
AM2+ mATX motherboard
8GB DDR2 800 RAM
AMD 7770 at 1.1ghz

This is a second PC for when friends come to play so I don't want to spend too much on this upgrade. I play BF4 and similar types of games, with some Civ V types games as well. I find the PhII 965 feels a little laggy in a 64 player server. I'm not touching the the GPU yet.

This is what I was thinking: i5 4570 $195
Cheap H61 motherboard for $50-$60
1 stick 8GB DDR1600 RAM $70

Is this the cheapest upgrade that is worth it? I've thought about an i3 which seems slow for BF4 or even an AMD FX6300 but that just eats extra power from my limited PSU that I would rather put towards a R9 270X or similar in a year or so.

 

[SPBHM]

3.6GHz PII X4 is not that bad, so I think going for an i5 makes sense,
(but you need H81, not H61 for the 4570)

obviously the 7770 is going to feel pretty slow with such a fast CPU, but I think you know that.

for BF4 mantle might help you a little bit with the PII!?

 

[nwo]

Steer clear of AMD CPUs if the primary use is going to be gaming.

I think spending an additional 50 bucks on the i5 over an i3 makes sense.... Otherwise, you will be stuck in the same place several years from now. i5 is much more future proof. Although an i3 Haswell will be sufficient and still a huge upgrade over a 3.6GHz PhII 965.

8GB of RAM is plenty, consider 2x4GB instead of 1x8GB. Might be cheaper and it should be better since you will be able to use it in dual channel.

Also, what SPBHM said, you will need an H81 motherboard for the 4570 (Haswell) since H61 is for Sandy/Ivy Bridge CPUs.

 

[AtenRa]

The HD7770 will be your limiting factor even with the Phenom if you play at 1080p. I would suggest to upgrade the GPU first, going with a faster CPU will not help you in those games(Civ V will see gains when in zoom out).

Also, try Mantle in BF4, it will help you eliminate any CPU limitations.

 

[Essence_of_War]

The HD7770 will be your limiting factor even with the Phenom if you play at 1080p. I would suggest to upgrade the GPU first

This.

Your bottleneck is almost certainly that 7770.

 

[Hubb1e]

I meant to say H81 and the cheap motherboards only have 2 ram slots so I wanted to leave one free. Single channel is like a 2% penalty and I'm willing to live with that.

Mantle didn't really help all that much and now the game crashes after every round

 

[Hubb1e]

The HD7770 will be your limiting factor even with the Phenom if you play at 1080p. I would suggest to upgrade the GPU first, going with a faster CPU will not help you in those games(Civ V will see gains when in zoom out).

Also, try Mantle in BF4, it will help you eliminate any CPU limitations.

Thanks for the advice, but a GPU will never be a limiting factor unless I'm already playing on low settings. I can play on low and medium settings and I still get the same stuttering which means it is the CPU that is my limiting factor. I know the 7770 is not that fast, but it still looks okay on medium settings and I can do 60fps as long as the CPU isn't being hit too hard. I play at 16x10 on this machine too which is helpful to the 7770.

I think I'll go with this i5 4570. It seems like a nice upgrade. Thanks for the confirmation guys.

 

[TeknoBug]

I'm afraid with that AM2+ board you've hit a wall.

So yeah even a low end i5 will do just fine, I play games on an i5 3550 (gimped version of 3570K).

 

[JumBie]

Look for a used i5 2500k and mobo. Ive seen both go for 150-200 together.

 

[tweakboy]

4570 for sure!

 

[Lepton87]

Look for a used i5 2500k and mobo. Ive seen both go for 150-200 together.

He said he had a "limited" PSU so I don't know if it will handle an overclocked 2500k, but even at the stock voltage an 2500k should hit 4GHz, i5 4570 is clocked at 3.2-3.6GHz, SB is about 15% slower clock for clock.

 

[nwo]

Even with an OCed 2500k, total system power consumption (with the 7770) will be under 300W and he has a 380W PSU. Should be fine if you ask me.

I'd also recommend looking for a decent used 2500k combo for $200. It's tough to beat at that price.

 

[OCGuy]

4570 would be a great upgrade. Also get a cheap SSD to boot from if you don't have one already.

 

[Lil Frier]

Are you anywhere near a Micro Center?

http://www.microcenter.com/site/brands/intel-processor-bundles.aspx

As you can see, they'll sell you the K version of the i5 for $15 less than Amazon will charge you for the non-K ersion. On top of that, they'll take $30 off the board you get with it. If you're on a budget, you could still go for an H81 board, then look at Z87 when you have more money, I suppose. You'd have 4 RAM slots, for going over 16 GB later, if you wanted (for some reason or another).

Just adding that option to the list, but the i5-4570 would still be a nice jump from the Phenom II.

 

[nwo]

MC finally took the price of 4670k down to $179.99 Great deal!!! If you are near a MC, that is definitely the way to go!

 

[JumBie]

MC finally took the price of 4670k down to $179.99 Great deal!!! If you are near a MC, that is definitely the way to go!

Ummm.....wow.....

 

[Hubb1e]

Are you anywhere near a Micro Center?

http://www.microcenter.com/site/brands/intel-processor-bundles.aspx

As you can see, they'll sell you the K version of the i5 for $15 less than Amazon will charge you for the non-K ersion. On top of that, they'll take $30 off the board you get with it. If you're on a budget, you could still go for an H81 board, then look at Z87 when you have more money, I suppose. You'd have 4 RAM slots, for going over 16 GB later, if you wanted (for some reason or another).

Just adding that option to the list, but the i5-4570 would still be a nice jump from the Phenom II.

My Micro Center closed down. It was a sad day for all of us in San Jose.

I've got some bids on some 2500ks on eBay, but haven's seen any with motherboards at all. The processors alone are going for around $170 and I already lost one auction because I didn't go above $160. A used z68 board separate is about $45 so I'm at about the same cost for that as a i5 4570 on a H81 board. An aggressive overclock will be faster than the Haswell chip, but if I went conservative to 4ghz or so it would probably be a wash with the Haswell chip better on power. We'll see if I win any of these 2500ks I've bid on.

 

[AtenRa]

You cannot OC with H81, not even with BCLK. You can raise the iGPU though

 

[nwo]

2500k going for $170 on ebay... That's a huge wow factor when you consider a BNIB 4670k is only $180 at MC.

I was in the same dilema when I was putting together my second rig a few months ago... I got some 2500k offers for $160-180... but I ended up grabbing a 3570k for $149.99 at MC since they went on sale :awe:

Gotta love MC :wub:

edit: As far as the combos go, you will have better odds of finding a combo on a for sale/for trade forum rather than ebay. There are some on ebay, but usually not a lot. I got a 2500k + asrock p67 extreme 4 mobo + corsair h60 with push/pull + radeon 5870 combo for $300 shipped about 2 months ago from the FS/FT section of these forums.

 

[Magic Carpet]

My Micro Center closed down. It was a sad day for all of us in San Jose.

I've got some bids on some 2500ks on eBay, but haven's seen any with motherboards at all. The processors alone are going for around $170 and I already lost one auction because I didn't go above $160. A used z68 board separate is about $45 so I'm at about the same cost for that as a i5 4370 on a H81 board. An aggressive overclock will be faster than the Haswell chip, but if I went conservative to 4ghz or so it would probably be a wash with the Haswell chip better on power. We'll see if I win any of these 2500ks I've bid on.

4570 can be clocked 3.6 ghz on all cores, to match that 2500k will have to be oced to at least 4 ghz. Just bear in mind, if you are aiming to save power. And 4370 (whatever you meant here) is just a bad buy, imo.

 

[JumBie]

2500k going for $170 on ebay... That's a huge wow factor when you consider a BNIB 4670k is only $180 at MC.

I was in the same dilema when I was putting together my second rig a few months ago... I got some 2500k offers for $160-180... but I ended up grabbing a 3570k for $149.99 at MC since they went on sale :awe:

Gotta love MC :wub:

edit: As far as the combos go, you will have better odds of finding a combo on a for sale/for trade forum rather than ebay. There are some on ebay, but usually not a lot. I got a 2500k + asrock p67 extreme 4 mobo + corsair h60 with push/pull + radeon 5870 combo for $300 shipped about 2 months ago from the FS/FT section of these forums.

If only we could get prices like that here in Canada.

 

[Deceneu]

Steer clear of AMD CPUs if the primary use is going to be gaming.

I think spending an additional 50 bucks on the i5 over an i3 makes sense.... Otherwise, you will be stuck in the same place several years from now. i5 is much more future proof. Although an i3 Haswell will be sufficient and still a huge upgrade over a 3.6GHz PhII 965.

8GB of RAM is plenty, consider 2x4GB instead of 1x8GB. Might be cheaper and it should be better since you will be able to use it in dual channel.

Also, what SPBHM said, you will need an H81 motherboard for the 4570 (Haswell) since H61 is for Sandy/Ivy Bridge CPUs.

AMD CPU-s are good enough for gaming ,whats with this hype regarding AMD not being good for gaming.
Unless you are playing your games at 640 by 480 i see no reason in paying for an expensive CPU.
The higher the resolution the less CPU is involved.

And as Mantle came in finally ,dual card config are able to reach full potential on very high resolutions , limited even by the mighty Intel expensive CPU-s.

In Europe from what i ve seen Intel CPU-s are quite expensive and AMD equivalents are always cheaper by even 30 percent by them selves ,what to say about a mobo combo..
I would not say it s fair making youngsters ask mummy and daddy to pay a lot of money for CPU-s that never get used just tot be in trend with the guys posting around the www for 10 % more scores in useless apps.

A FX 6300 is an upgrade from a 965 in many aspects at least this is how i saw upgrading from a 975 BE.
Nice overclocking ,cooler CPU ,less noise ,less power consumption ,more performance in games that are aware of multicore.
But the fact it s cooler is the thing that i liked most.

Any FM2/+ quad core APU is an upgrade compared to the Phenom 2
I played BF 4 beta on my secondary rig based on a 5600K APU with it s own iGPU

 

[Hubb1e]

Well, I won an auction for an i5 2600k for $200. I guess I'll replace my i5 2500k in my main rig with this 8 threaded CPU. Now I need a motherboard and some RAM. I guess I'm not sticking to my budget. That's how it goes with this hobby though...

 

[JumBie]

Well, I won an auction for an i5 2600k for $200. I guess I'll replace my i5 2500k in my main rig with this 8 threaded CPU. Now I need a motherboard and some RAM. I guess I'm not sticking to my budget. That's how it goes with this hobby though...

Are you gunna OC?

 

[Hubb1e]

Are you gunna OC?

Of course