Considering this upgrade: Thoughts.

[Stugots]

I've been toying with the idea of upgrading my aging computer but I'm worried at how much of an improvement it will be. I'm getting back into PC gaming, and my current computer can handle most of the games I play pretty well.

Here is my current system:

• HP xw6400
• 2x Xeon 5160 (3.0ghz, dual core)
• 8gb DDR2-5300
• Radeon 6950 2gb

Here is what I'm looking at upgrading to:

• AMD FX 8350
• ASRock 970 Extreme4
• 8gb DDR3 (maybe 16gb)

I would be carrying over my SSD & HDD as well as the Radeon 6950. The CPU and Board are a combo from Microcenter. I'm looking at an AMD combo because it seems that AMD system offer more bang for the buck.

 

[Dangman]

The FX-8350 will be faster than your current setup. But whether or not it'll be worth it is dependent on what you're using the PC for.

For gaming, you'll notice a difference but the difference won't justify the money spent. Better off with Intel for gaming.

 

[Stugots]

That is a surprise to me, I would have imagined that this new combo would be substantially faster than my current system in pretty much every way.

Is my system really that fast, or are AMD CPU's really that bad?

The motherboard in my current system is an Intel 5000 chipset, DDR2, PCIe 1.1, SATA2. There's alot of room for improvement there.

 

[Dangman]

That is a surprise to me, I would have imagined that this new combo would be substantially faster than my current system in pretty much every way.

Is my system really that fast, or are AMD CPU's really that bad?

That bad. For gaming anyway. For pretty much everything else, that AMD setup will be faster than your current setup, especially if the usage is heavily multi-threaded.

But again, you haven't answered my question: What are you using this PC for? Depending on your answer, you might be better off with an Intel Core i5 setup even with the higher cost from a price to performance standpoint.

Also what PSU do you have?

 

[Stugots]

Mainly playing racing sim games: iracing, assetto corsa, etc. My current PC actually plays them very well as it is. But I recently started playing games like Train and Ship simulator and the performance is pretty bad.

Plus like I said, my motherboard only has PCIe 1.1 and SATA2 so I feel that my overall system performance would be greatly improved. My SSD easily maxes out the SATA2 bus.

Not really concerned about a PSU at this point. I know I'll need a new one though.

 

[Dangman]

Mainly playing racing sim games: iracing, assetto corsa, etc. My current PC actually plays them very well as it is. But I recently started playing games like Train and Ship simulator and the performance is pretty bad.

Then yeah, you're better off with Intel. Microcenter has CPU + mobo combo deals with certain Intel CPUs. You get the Core i5 4690K for $200 and there's a combo deal where you can get the Gigabyte B85M-D3H for $35. So it comes out to $235. Not to mention that this also allows you to take the motherboard back to Microcenter for exchange should you be unlucky in getting one that shipped with an older UEFI and therefore does not support the 4690K.

See the difference between the 4690K and the 8350 yourself:
http://anandtech.com/bench/product/697?vs=1261

Combined with the fact that the B85 platform is actually newer than the AMD 970 platform, unless that 8350 setup is significantly cheaper by like $100, better off with Intel.

Plus like I said, my motherboard only has PCIe 1.1 and SATA2 so I feel that my overall system performance would be greatly improved. My SSD easily maxes out the SATA2 bus.

Unless you're doing constant data transfers between multiple SSDs and hard drives in your PC, you're more or less getting the best performance out of your SSD due to the fact that SATA 3.0Gb/s doesn't limit the true indicator of SSD responsiveness: random read/write speeds