Suggestions for upgrading sons PC

[CuriousMike]

He has an A10-5800k with an R9-270.

He's an avid gamer. CS-GO, WOW, Overwatch, Battlefield, SC 2 as examples; Overwatch his current game.

He talks about "lag spikes" - the only time I've seen them, it appears he means "his minimum framerate tanks then picks back up."

He's able to game 1080p at low/medium with OK framerates, but he wants more consistent frame rates.

My guess is his CPU is letting him down (particularly in regards to the low minimums), and that a stronger CPU would smooth out his current frame rate.

If this is true, is there a $150ish mobo+cpu combo you could recommend that would help smooth this out?

(For I'll ignore the fact that anything recommended will likely means also adding DDR4 memory and ergo addtl monies.).

 

[giantpandaman2]

Drop the render scale from 100%.

 

[sttubs]

You could try to overclock the current CPU. If that helps then I'd upgrade the GPU. Double check what CPU's your current motherboard can handle & maybe upgrade the CPU if it can handle a nice one. How much memory does he have, I'd recommend 8gb min.

 

[frozentundra123456]

He has an A10-5800k with an R9-270.

He's an avid gamer. CS-GO, WOW, Overwatch, Battlefield, SC 2 as examples; Overwatch his current game.

He talks about "lag spikes" - the only time I've seen them, it appears he means "his minimum framerate tanks then picks back up."

He's able to game 1080p at low/medium with OK framerates, but he wants more consistent frame rates.

My guess is his CPU is letting him down (particularly in regards to the low minimums), and that a stronger CPU would smooth out his current frame rate.

If this is true, is there a $150ish mobo+cpu combo you could recommend that would help smooth this out?

(For I'll ignore the fact that anything recommended will likely means also adding DDR4 memory and ergo addtl monies.).

If you live close to a microcenter, you can get really good combo deals on FX processors and motherboards. Otherwise, 150.00 for cpu plus mb is a going to be difficult. I dont think most of those games except for maybe battlefield are well multithreaded, so your best option barring a microcenter deal is probably a Haswell i3 and a lower end motherboard. Unfortunately, on Amazon and NewEgg, haswell i3 are now actually more expensive than skylake. But you still should be able to get close to the 150.00 target. Unfortunately, there is not a really great drop in upgrade for your current motherboard.

 

[Torn Mind]

http://www.logicalincrements.com/games/overwatch/

Useful guide.

You want to be sure what is the real bottleneck, because both the GPU and CPU could use upgrading. Probably want to have Task Manager in the background and checking it in the moments the lags occurs. If the CPU is around 100%, it is the cpu being bottlenecked. If the CPU is not load but the GPU is at 100%, then the GPU is bottlenecked.

You might need moar GPU just as much as you need more CPU for that game.

 

[lehtv]

You don't need task manager for that. Just reduce display resolution. If minimum fps increases significantly, GPU is the bottleneck. If not, CPU is the bottleneck.

However I can tell you it's almost certainly the CPU holding back. I'd suggest upgrading to i5-6xxx.