Adipose Posted August 27, 2017 Share Posted August 27, 2017 Okay, here's da situation. I run a HEAVILY modded Skyrim, and I'd like to add other mods. However, I get a lot of ctds, due, I think, to running out of vram. My card only has 2 GB of ram and I figure that I need to go up to a minimum of 4 GB, if not more. Eight would be good. So, what's the best buy in the three to five hundred dollar range? On Newegg, the best rated 4 GB gaming cards that are affordable...as in under two hundred...are becoming scarce. So, I figure I gotta go up to cards in the three to five hundred price range.. I'm talking gaming cards of course. There apparently is a difference between those and performance/business cards. Also, my mobo has an FX 4100 quad core cpu, however, that mobo will also support up to an eight core, so I'm thinking about going up to an FX 8000 series cpu. ASUS says that board will support one of those, though critique on Newegg pretty universally mentions that it runs hot so an advanced cooling system will be needed. Will much be gained by going to an 8 core cpu? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iXenite Posted August 28, 2017 Share Posted August 28, 2017 The GTX 1070 fits right into your budget. However, it will be bottlenecked by anything your motherboard can support. If you don't want to spend too much on a CPU right now - grabbing a Ryzen 3 1200 (and overclocking it) would be a good choice. You can get a B350 motherboard for about $70+ USD, and 8GB's of DDR4 memory at 2666Mhz for around $60+ USD. The CPU itself is $110 USD. If you want a serious upgrade, I suggest getting a Ryzen 5 1600 - it's the best value CPU on the market right now and will handle the GTX 1070 just fine. The Ryzen 3 1200 will bottleneck a GTX 1070, but probably less than an old FX will. The GTX 1060 6GB - which is about half of the price of a GTX 1070 will not be bottlenecked by a Ryzen 1200. If you overclock an FX 8370 you might not bottleneck it either. Just be aware that the stutter you get with those CPU's is universal, regardless of which one you have. That was a lot! Now, here is the thing about VRAM and Skyrim. As a DX9 game it will not use more than 4GB's of VRAM. With ENB you were able to use a little extra VRAM on things like post-process effects and resolution which helped a lot with performance. With Windows 10, all DX9 games are hard locked at 4GB's of VRAM. Nothing can change that, not even ENB. When it comes to upgrades, I have one question. Is Skyrim the only game you're really interested in playing? Are you interested in games like Ghost Recon: Wildlands or The Witcher 3? Modern games that demand a lot out of your CPU, will most certainly benefit from an upgrade. Most game these days benefit greatly for a 4 core, 8 thread chip. The days of i5's being the minimum for gaming are really coming to an end. As is 8GB's of system RAM, 16GB's is really becoming the norm. However, older titles will not be able to use all of these resources. Most older titles benefit from strong single core performance, which is why Intel reigned supreme in games at the time. System RAM requirements also seldom went over 4GB's. A big reason for this change is the new generation of consoles. While still miles behind PC - they have allowed the industry to move on in terms of system requirements. Anyway, this has been a super long post. Hopefully some of it made sense - I know most of it was unnecessary, but I'm trying my best to be detailed and explain stuff. It's also a bit late in the night, so that isn't really helping. Super short version: I suggest upgrading your entire platform to Ryzen and get a GTX 1060 or GTX 1070 depending on the CPU you choose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adipose Posted August 28, 2017 Author Share Posted August 28, 2017 Many thanks for the input. I'll look around and see what there is to see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iXenite Posted August 28, 2017 Share Posted August 28, 2017 (edited) You're welcome. I highly suggest watching this vdeo by Hardware Unboxed on Ryzen 3. It compares it to the FX series line of CPU's to the newest budget entry CPU from AMD. This channel also has videos on other Ryzen series chips that are worth watching if you're curious. They (Hardware Unboxed) have a number of videos on the Ryzen 3 processor which should be helpful in showcasing how much GPU that CPU can handle. Other channels on YouTube also discuss the Ryzen 3 and when it begins to bottleneck as well - all worth a watch in my opinion. Is It Worth the Upgrade? Ryzen 3 vs. Core i5-2500K vs. FX-8370: Edited August 28, 2017 by DaddyDirection Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts