[InspectorHusky]

Dear Tech Experts,
Currently I have AMD A6 5400k + 8GB Ram (kingston) and Sapphire HD 7770 1GB. Not gonna lie, it is pretty bad. No chance to get recent titles on frame rate higher than 25. Of course I understand that my CPU isn't good enough to run ,for example, Far Cry 3. That's why I decided to sell my CPU+ Motherboard, and save enough money for I5 or I7. Because from what I have seen those are best CPU's in 350-550$ price range. So I need Your help to decide, what CPU should I buy and should I sell my GPU too. Because I want to have a good PC capable of running most recent games at high quality and decent frame rate. So my budget is 350-550$ and I need an I5 or I7 CPU + motherboard. Also, I want to know if my GPU will be good enough to run most recent games. Please help me out!

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Oh yeah, I forgot! My motherboard: http://www.msi.com/p...tml#/?div=Basic

[InspectorHusky]

Oh yeah, I forgot! My motherboard: http://www.msi.com/p...tml#/?div=Basic

[phillpower2]

InspectorHusky

For now I suggest that you take a step back and have a rethink before offloading the MB and CPU, the HD 7770 is a budget level video card and the FPS that you are getting reflects that, the card is also only 128-bit which means that the video quality is not as good as what you would achieve with a 256-bit video card.

You have told us that you have 8GB of Kingston Ram which is fine but we could also do with knowing the exact type so that we can check the specifications, it could be two sticks of the slowest Kingston KVR1066D3E7S/4G ECC DDR3 1066 Hynix H5TQ2G83BFRH9C 1.5V DS 4GB for example which could bottleneck the performance of the CPU and GPU.

Let us know the Ram information or better still provide a link to it so that we can take a look before we make any potential upgrade suggestions.

[InspectorHusky]

InspectorHusky

For now I suggest that you take a step back and have a rethink before offloading the MB and CPU, the HD 7770 is a budget level video card and the FPS that you are getting reflects that, the card is also only 128-bit which means that the video quality is not as good as what you would achieve with a 256-bit video card.

You have told us that you have 8GB of Kingston Ram which is fine but we could also do with knowing the exact type so that we can check the specifications, it could be two sticks of the slowest Kingston KVR1066D3E7S/4G ECC DDR3 1066 Hynix H5TQ2G83BFRH9C 1.5V DS 4GB for example which could bottleneck the performance of the CPU and GPU.

Let us know the Ram information or better still provide a link to it so that we can take a look before we make any potential upgrade suggestions.

I have DDR3 4096MB 1600MZH Kingston Hyper X Ram. 2 of 'em which makes 8GB in total. This link could help: http://www.tigerdire...p?EdpNo=7104116

[phillpower2]

Thanks for the update which tells us that you have a good quality Ram

Your GPU does appear to be the weak link of the specs that we have so consider only upgrading that out of the MB, CPU and Ram etc at present, do you happen to know the PSU brand and model name or number in case it also needs upgrading to support any potential new video card.

[InspectorHusky]

My PSU is 400W, sorry don't know brand name. But it's a regular 400W.

[phillpower2]

We do need to know the brand and model details of the PSU because poor quality PSUs do not produce the claimed output + they tend to have low amps on the +12V rail, both of which are damaging to your hardware and in particular add on video cards as they can be power hungry, as a rule of thumb I do not use anything less than a 400W bronze rated PSU for system builds that do not have an add on video card and a PSU with a minimum of a 500W bronze rating for builds that do have an add on video card, this allows for future upgrades such as additional HDDs and a good cooling fan set up.

You only need to take off the side of the case and check the sticker on the PSU to get the information, to help see step 1 only @ http://www.dummies.c...wer-supply.html