Would a new processor even help? Computer component question

[WouldYouKindly]

I've been steadily upgrading my computer into something of a behemoth. It came stock with an AMD FX 4130 quad core processor. This is a decent lowish end processor for gaming. Would I see an appreciable difference in performance putting in something like an FX 8350?

Also, if someone says anything about Intel, I'll slap you. The processor sockets are different and wholly incompatible with my mobo. It's a Gigibyte GA-78LMT-USB3 and only supports AMD processors.

 

[Clowndoe]

The whole bottleneck thing is so complex and opaque, it's hard to say when exactly your CPU is holding you back. If you're not getting satisfactory performance from games and your graphics card is definitely not the issue, I'd say go for it. If that's not the case, then I wouldn't because I don't think it's worth upgrading for upgrading's sake.

On a side note I've had an 8320 for over a year now and I've got no complaints.

 

[Supernova1138]

Your motherboard can support an FX 8350 if you have BIOS revision F3. I caution you however, because you have a lower end motherboard with with a weak voltage regulator setup, and the 8350 is a very power hungry chip and even if it is on the CPU supported list, some people have had stability issues with the 8350s on lower end boards with the 760 chipset. The 8320 might be a safer choice, but don't expect to be able to do much overclocking.

You didn't say which graphics card you have, which games you play, and what resolution you are running, so it is hard to say if getting a new CPU will improve game performance that much. The newer Piledriver CPUs are much better than Bulldozer, especially in single threaded performance, so moving up to even an FX 6300 would be an improvement, if you are running games that are fairly CPU bound.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

So I'd probably be better off with a 6350? That's reasonable and probably nearly as future proof. Ported games will have 8 core support but a 6 core running at 3.9 ghz will easily be able to outpace the hardware of the new consoles.

I do tend to run some fairly CPU intensive games. Real time strategies with a lot of things moving on the screen at once and some older games that only utilize one core. That's where I see my worst performance considering how much over kill 16 gb of ram and an R9 270X(basically a beefier amd 7800 series) is for a 10 year old game. Compatability issues could also explain it though. As for resolution, I tend to play in 1920X1080 whenever possible. Most games run quite well at that and medium to high settings. Most FPS's, even Battlefield 4 because it's very well optimized, run on high settings. What I'm trying to do is start recording and video editing and that generally takes some juice on the processor side. It's why I'd like an 8350, but if an 8320 would be safer, I could deal just. Would your recommendation be a higher clocked 6 core or a lower clocked 8 core?
I don't plan on OCing. Never been worth the danger in my opinion. Also, would probably need something beefier than the stock cooler.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

I've been steadily upgrading my computer into something of a behemoth. It came stock with an AMD FX 4130 quad core processor. This is a decent lowish end processor for gaming. Would I see an appreciable difference in performance putting in something like an FX 8350?

Well there are several ways to diagnose your situation, but I would need a bit more info about your rig, such as the GPU, power supply, and whatnot.

The AM3+ platform is pretty good all-round, and keep in mind that the most important thing for gaming is the graphics card, always. But, bottlenecking can happen on the CPU. Usually though, the CPU only starts bottlenecking with dual-core or single core CPUs, and the 4-core FX has a high enough output per cycle to keep up.

The best way to tell is to mildly overclock the CPU, for about $40 USD, you can get a very nice aftermarket cooler that will help with this. I usually recommend this anyway, as AMD stock coolers are. . . bad.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835214023

Make sure this will fit in your case, of course, and there are other options out there, but I think this is a solid choice.

Edit:
Ok just saw your second post. If you are worried abut overhead for recording, then there are several other angles to this:

1) Fraps is great, but its files are very large, and most people bottleneck at the write speed of their Hard Drives. An SSD is strongly Recommended for fraps use. Cam studio and others are less HDD intensive, but also can be lower quality.

2) External or PCIe capture cards can be an option as well, as their overhead is moved to the PCI bus.

3) For free, you can try MSI Afterburner software. At its core, it is overclocking software, but it also comes with video capture and voice recording. I have not used that function myself, but it is free, and may be worth a try.

 

[RevRaptor]

I'm gona agree with what others have said the FX 6350 would be a safer choice for your MoBo. Without knowing your exact set up its kinda hard to give advice.

what I will say however is remember that bottlenecking can also be caused by the motherboard. Higher end tech requires a higher end MoBo to support it, just because it says it can support it does not mean it can run it well, a little bit of research can go a long way with these sort of things.

If you do upgrade It's gona to be a really good idea to get an after market CPU cooler. The stock one is not a good performer

 

[Supernova1138]

So I'd probably be better off with a 6350? That's reasonable and probably nearly as future proof. Ported games will have 8 core support but a 6 core running at 3.9 ghz will easily be able to outpace the hardware of the new consoles.

I do tend to run some fairly CPU intensive games. Real time strategies with a lot of things moving on the screen at once and some older games that only utilize one core. That's where I see my worst performance considering how much over kill 16 gb of ram and an R9 270X(basically a beefier amd 7800 series) is for a 10 year old game. Compatability issues could also explain it though. As for resolution, I tend to play in 1920X1080 whenever possible. Most games run quite well at that and medium to high settings. Most FPS's, even Battlefield 4 because it's very well optimized, run on high settings. What I'm trying to do is start recording and video editing and that generally takes some juice on the processor side. It's why I'd like an 8350, but if an 8320 would be safer, I could deal just. Would your recommendation be a higher clocked 6 core or a lower clocked 8 core?
I don't plan on OCing. Never been worth the danger in my opinion. Also, would probably need something beefier than the stock cooler.

The 8320 is probably a better choice for video editing and recording because the extra cores will allow for faster encoding and will help prevent the video recording software from getting in the way of the game. The drawback with the lower clockspeed is you do lose out a bit in single threaded performance. For most newer games, that isn't a huge problem, so unless you play a lot of Skyrim, or Starcraft 2, I wouldn't worry too much about that, the vast majority of the time you are going to be more GPU bound with your current graphics card.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

Need more info?

HERE'S MORE INFO!

Windows 8.1 (x64) (build 9600)
Install Language: English (United States)
Installed: 11/29/2013 11:34:09 AM
Boot Mode: BIOS (Secure Boot not supported) Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. GA-78LMT-USB3
Enclosure Type: Desktop
Processor a Main Circuit Board b
3.80 gigahertz AMD FX-4130 Quad-Core
256 kilobyte primary memory cache
2048 kilobyte tertiary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (2 total)
Hyper-threaded (4 total) Board: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. GA-78LMT-USB3
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
BIOS: Award Software International, Inc. F4 10/19/2012
Drives Memory Modules c,d
1499.94 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
1036.97 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH24NS95 [Optical drive]

WDC WD10EZEX-00BN5A0 [Hard drive] (1000.20 GB) -- drive 1, s/n WD-WCC3F0708024, rev 01.01A01, SMART Status: Healthy
WDC WD5000AAKX-00ERMA0 [Hard drive] (500.11 GB) -- drive 0, s/n WD-WCC2ECU57278, rev 15.01H15, SMART Status: Healthy 16382 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

Slot 'A0' has 4096 MB all 1333 ram
Slot 'A1' has 4096 MB
Slot 'A2' has 4096 MB
Slot 'A3' has 4096 MB
Local Drive Volumes

c: (NTFS on drive 0) * 499.74 GB 323.61 GB free
e: (NTFS on drive 1) 1000.20 GB 713.36 GB free


Thanks for all your help guys...

Oh, and the PSU is a 620W Antec. I've already looked into the voltage, the PSU should be able to handle most things I throw at it. And the board is revision 4.1. It had a very distinctive color scheme and my case is chock full of holes so I can get a look at it.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

Next time, I'll make damn sure they aren't shorting me with a cheap mobo. Hell, next time, I'll build the damn thing myself. If nothing else, going through this upgrade process has given me a lot more confidence in my ability to work on electronics.

 

[Requia]

I would suggest getting a CPU monitor program (I'm afraid I couldn't tell you what a good Windows one is), and see how much of your CPU time is being used during play. If all your cores are maxing out or close yeah upgrade it. 8320 would be a better bet, the 8350 is only a hair better for a pretty steep cost increase.

I don't see a real problem with your board, not a lot of bells and whistles but while it's 'cheap' AMD boards tend that way, it's a huge part of keeping the cost of AMD boxes down.

Edit: Actually you have slow HT on the motherboard. Not a good thing. Definatley check if the CPU is being fully utilized at load, if the problem is at I/O no CPU is going to fix things.

 

[veloper]

Swapping a quad-core AMD CPU for another AMD cpu won't be much use. Current games barely utilise the 4th core effectively, let alone anything beyond that. The cpu is okay btw, just budget and it will play current games.

If you still want to upgrade the CPU, the only significant CPU upgrade at this point is switching the mainboard aswell and going for an intel core i5. That alone won't help in your case.

What is really going to make your rig faster for games is adding a discrete graphics card. That built-in HD3000 on your mobo is your bottleneck for games.
Your mobo should also have a pci express x16 slot, any $100+ offering from Nvidia or AMD should make a collosal difference.

 

[devotedsniper]

I wouldn't say it was the processor, the FX series is a good chip the only reason it gets all the hate it did was because fan boys thought it was going to be some sort of a big F you to Intels i series. For the price though there a brilliant chip, I've yet to find any game which even taxes my 8120 at stock speeds the only reason I have it oc'd to 4GHz is because my warranty allows it.

To be honest the biggest bottleneck in gaming once you have a good CPU(which I would say you do) and you have some nice RAM (again you should be fine)is the graphics card and judging by the fact you haven't told us what you have (or i'm blind) suggests your running an onboard graphics chip, get a card and you should be laughing. Those onboard chips are only up to HD video playback and even then they can be downright terrible.