which CPU/VID upgrade should I choose?

after recent updates, my FPS rate drops to abysmal 30 fps and in crowd situattion even worse despite on LOW and turned of shadow and aprticles, and I decided to bite the bullet upgarde my 5 year old rig.

Currently on 1st gen FX 4100 with an HD6850 vid card, I originally planed to buy 8350 but the card is a bit too pricey and heard people from various forum that the benefit is really very marginal over say 6300 which only cost half and the framerate difference is maybe only 5~7. Is it true? I only play planetside 2 and nope, don't want to switch to intel cpu.

Which graphic card to go with? considering the PSU is an enermax 500Watt unit, asus m5a97 version 1 motherboard. simply don't want to spend way to much on hardware as I have full-time job and 2 little kid to fend.

it all depends on what your budget is
do you want to stay with AMD or do you prefer Intel
if you go with Intel you will need a new motherboard
video card, AMD or Nvidia
do you want to overclock ?

i can give you a upgrade for a 1000 €/$ but i don't think this is what you want
my suggestion:

FX 8300, 140 €/$
this is a AM3+ socket make sure it fits your motherboard or you will need to buy a new one
and if you need to buy a new one i would go for a Intel processor

Geforce GTX 960, 220 €/$ or higher

i want to stick with amd and nope, the budget is maybe around $250

hard to do with 250$
i can go cheaper but it would be hardly noticeable to your system
maybe you can first buy the possessor cause i think your system would benefit the most from it
and later on buy a new graphic card
my suggestion is only 110 dollars more expensive and it's almost new year if you know what i mean

Hey man, i run a FX8350 @4.5Ghz, ASUS R9 280 3Gb at stock settings, 8Gb 1866MHz Ram on a ASUS M5A97 evo r2.0. PSU is a 530w Thermaltake. My settings are ultra on everything with shadows on low @1920x1080. My FPS are mostly around 70-80 in average fights and drop to 30s only in really dense chokepoints in 96+/96+ battles. So it is very well playable for me. A few months ago i had a FX6300 @4.5Ghz in the same config. While my frames were nearly the same, the 8350 pushes it a bit more and the fps fluctuation is so much more smoother on the 8350, so the feeling is a lot better. Besides it is a lot easier to get the FX8350 stable at 4.5Ghz than the FX6300, while still having some space to push it more. The oc on my 8350 runs with only a tiny bit more voltage than stock, to keep it stable.

With the FXs you get a good deal for your bucks IF you plan to overclock it a bit. If you plan to run on stock you are better off with intel i think. But you wrote that you will go with AMD, so here are some tips that may be useful for you: Get a good aftermarket cooler (i have Freezer Xtreme rev.2) or watercooling, the FXs produce a lot of heat. Then get yourself a good MB. I can recommend the ASUS M5A97 evo r2.0. It has a lot settings in the bios for tuning your system and you will find a lot of tips for finetuning that CPU/MB combo in the internet. If your components are good calibrated to each other you get a very fast system, i.e. pushing my NB frequency to 2400Mhz got me about 10 Fps. You can do all of that also with a FX6300, but it can be a real hassle so id recommend the FX8350, which is more than enough for everyrthing else than PS2.

Op. Enjoy this site. I've used them for the past 5 years. Without fail the best pcs I can get for in the cheap

For 1k you can get an i5 6600k @3.5 and a Gtx 980

Or you could replace your entire oc with the 600 build. Which ain't shabby.

But I would upgrade both if you can. Possibly even a peripheral upgrade in mouse and keyboard.

I know k65s are on sale at Best Buy and they always have good deals on mice. Personally playing the m65 vengenance (updated firmware to fix acceleration) and k65. For 150. Nice mouse and banging keyboard.

My biggest concern for you is upgrading part by part has its own issues like limiting your choice of hardware and then choosing poor hardware because your trying to get the best each upgrade. And they might not play nice with old mobo etc.

If you wanted to do it right. You need a mobo, cpu, then memory and gpu. The mobo will be the biggest pain.

I have to disagree with anyone suggesting an AMD CPU at this point. I kinda have to question how informed they are too.

AMD has fallen completely behind Intel in every category, badly. Even if you overclock them to the bleeding edge, they don't even come close.

Don't take my word for it, Google is your friend. AMD CPU's are just garbage.

Please change to intel. I did the same thing a month ago and my performance boost in every game was ridiculous. I couldnt believe it. The I5 (4690K) was just a bit more expensive than the FX-8350 i had.

http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?i...epYiOo95mydTmQo0y5DtMaAtdf8P8HAQ&gclsrc=aw.ds

I5-6600k for 238.

Then save up for a Gtx ssc card you can get a decent one for 200

yes this is also what i would buy but this is only a budget of 250 $

I would actually recommend waiting for Zen OP.

It comes out next year and supposedly will be a much better processor than the current FX line. Your 6850 should be fine for PS2 its not a really graphically demanding game these days.

The CPU is your issue not your GPU.

Oh please. How many times have we heard this from AMD? The Bulldozer was supposed to be a game-changer as well. Turned out to be a piece of garbage that got smoked by year old Intel designs while consuming 45% more power.

Two words, BULL DOZER. Planetside is now more CPU intensive than video intensive. Your bulldozer AMD FX-4100 is now probably at the end of its lifetime, and was not good for this kind of game in the first place. But I recommend a Intel core i5 4th gen and above or for AMD, FX-4300 or higher, spend as much as you can here. For graphics cards. for Nividia, 750ti and above, with for AMD R7 260x and above.

thanks for above suggestions, but however, not only I don' twant to shovel in another $500ish dollar on my rig, but also I hate reinstall the entire OS if you replace the motherboard, also, I doubt my PSU could handle these CPUs. I thoroughly understand AMD sux big ********, as I, speaking here was a former AMD DV engineer at Markham, Ontario, Canada, our product simply lacks the brilliance architecture intel has, but our manager team always suggests a retailed price based on the product performance, and I think AMD fairs better in the price department.

FYI, my computer case is a 10 year old mid tower which doesn't ventilate that well, shovelling powerful CPU/GPU simply might cook themselves inside the case.

I have a full time computer programming job, and a freelancer GNU programmer in the spare time, probably don't have any time playing other games than planetside 2, maybe occasionally retros such as simcity 1, might&magic xeen running on dosbox....

Intel CPU's crush AMD when it comes to compiling code. If that helps

OP - I'm no expert on AMD stuff, but seemingly your graphics card is pretty good on benchmarks.
Your processor is very poor though.
Could you not just put the money on the best processor that'll slot in?
My understanding of PS2 is that beyond a point your FPS will be CPU limited, no matter how good your GPU or how low your settings.
Running a i7 2600 with GTX 970, both better than your equivalents, I'm getting CPU linked slowdown regularly, no matter what the graphics settings - the aim is 30-60, with as close to 60 as often as possible, if your screen isn't anything fancy.

Also, on the Fanboy wars, I understand PS2 favours Intel and NVidia.
This is clearly irrelevant to your request, a point seemingly missed by most.

TBH, anything more than 4 cores currently doesnt do that much. id reccomend the FX 6350 over the 8350, less cost but better single core speed otherwise the extra cores are usually going unused.
the Asus m5a97 is a terrible MB, so i would reccomend upgrading that to an ASRock Extreme 4 or better - basically anything with a 6+1 phase power supply or better otherwise heat on the new CPUs would become a problem.
HD6850 is a decent card, but new cards are getting ever cheaper. personally anything above 4gb is overkill. R9-270x or R7-370x is probably the best value at this point

Can you elaborate why m5a97 is such a poor MB? will it not working well with FX6350?

that board is a 4+1 phase power supply - so it heats up fast with a 125w cpu - it will work just fine, but run hot. which is why i reccomend a 6+1 as it will run about 8c cooler. i used to used that exact same board n after running PS2 on high for n hour my MB/CPU temp was in the mid/high 60's. my new MB is an 8+2 phase power supply n on ultra has never gotten hotter than 52c