Going from a Core 2 duo to i5 with GT 1030?

rpeters83

rpeters83

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Jan 11, 2009
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This is for my 8 year old son's computer. I got a free Core 2 Duo a little while ago threw a 1030 into it. It works well enough, but am curious to how much of an impact going to a Core i5 will have in terms of gaming. He's mostly into Fortnite, of course, but any smoother framerates are welcome. I see used core i5 machines on ebay for $75 but want to know if it's even worth it.

Thanks!
 
You'll see additional frames moving to an i5 and additional frames moving to at least a 1050 from a 1030.

You likely won't see the full benefit of one upgrade (CPU) until you do the other (GPU) and vice versa.

What I'm not sure about is which upgrade will yield more frames now given the current situation.
 
mda said:
You'll see additional frames moving to an i5 and additional frames moving to at least a 1050 from a 1030.

You likely won't see the full benefit of one upgrade (CPU) until you do the other (GPU) and vice versa.

What I'm not sure about is which upgrade will yield more frames now given the current situation.
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The 1030 is fine for what he plays, so no plans to upgrade that. Mainly, is $75 for a i5 worth it to get a little better experience during gameplay?
 
My first gen i5 and a GTX 960 played Fortnite pretty much maxed out @ 60fps 1080p.

I'm not sure how helpful that is....
 
OP: Can you be a bit more specific? Are we talking an i5 650 here or an i5 3570? etc. Core 2 Duo is really not up to standard today.. You could maybe consider (for cheaper) finding a Q6600 and giving it a mild OC (if the board supports) to drop in.
 
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I was using an i5-750 overclocked to 3.6Ghz.

The GTX 960 became the bottleneck at that point. (for Fortnite that is)
 
It very much depends on the game. My pc before this one was a core 2 duo E8600. I upgraded because I was heavily into playing Mechwarrior Online at the time. I figured out the reason for my terrible performance in that game was the dual core cpu. When I upgraded the cpu and kept the same graphics card the performance increase was huge, the minimum frames went from single digits to 20 something which made all the difference.
 
I wouldn't waste the time , money or effort in upgrading it. i5 2xxx were good in their day, but it has long past. (I5 2500k owner myself) Switch over to something like a Ryzen 5 1600, DDR4 RAM & a new Motherboard. All can be had for under $300 dollars if you look hard enough. Check out Mothmans post in the For Sale thread. He has very good prices. I just purchased the specs above from him for $215 dollars.
 
If I was going new I would grab one of those $130 ryzen 1700 chips that keep coming up lately with a cheap board and 16gb of ram for 300 or less. If used I would almost say grab an old full sized optiplex 9020 that can take a light video card for 100-150. Those optiplex use 4590,4690,4770,4790 haswell cpus so not the fastest anymore but still very solid for gaming.
 
Krenum said:
I wouldn't waste the time , money or effort in upgrading it. i5 2xxx were good in their day, but it has long past. (I5 2500k owner myself) Switch over to something like a Ryzen 5 1600, DDR4 RAM & a new Motherboard. All can be had for under $300 dollars if you look hard enough. Check out Mothmans post in the For Sale thread. He has very good prices. I just purchased the specs above from him for $215 dollars.
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He's only 8. Not sure what an 8yo is doing playing fortnite to begin with but hey.
 
Krenum said:
I wouldn't waste the time , money or effort in upgrading it. i5 2xxx were good in their day, but it has long past. (I5 2500k owner myself) Switch over to something like a Ryzen 5 1600, DDR4 RAM & a new Motherboard. All can be had for under $300 dollars if you look hard enough. Check out Mothmans post in the For Sale thread. He has very good prices. I just purchased the specs above from him for $215 dollars.
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Yep

I am heading to micronceter next week which is prob. where he got that stuff.
 
Furious_Styles said:
He's only 8. Not sure what an 8yo is doing playing fortnite to begin with but hey.
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Well, it would be a good learning experience for him if he's interested in computers to learn how to build them. I have no opinion on Fortnite, or atleast one that would be ok for this thread.
 
Krenum said:
Well, it would be a good learning experience for him if he's interested in computers to learn how to build them. I have no opinion on Fortnite, or atleast one that would be ok for this thread.
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Don't worry, there are no 8 year olds on the forum (yet).
 
use process explore and annalyse the thread load of th egames

if anyoe f them hit 100%/# of logical cores then you need more corespeed
if non of them come close and total cpu is not close to 100% then you cpu is delivering fine to your gpu
 
Friends 4690k oced is a bottle neck for his rx580. But only in certain games.
 
rpeters83 said:
This is for my 8 year old son's computer. I got a free Core 2 Duo a little while ago threw a 1030 into it. It works well enough, but am curious to how much of an impact going to a Core i5 will have in terms of gaming. He's mostly into Fortnite, of course, but any smoother framerates are welcome. I see used core i5 machines on ebay for $75 but want to know if it's even worth it.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

The GT 1030 is capable of getting over 100 FPS on average using competitive settings at 1080p with a decent CPU. Competitive settings = everything set to low and textures and draw distance set to Epic. To answer your question – Yes, the Core2Duo is holding him back big time. An upgrade to a Core i5 – 3470/2400 system would yield large improvements. The GT 1030 is a great little Fortnite card, but you do need a capable CPU in order to get the most out of it.
 
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