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Phenom 1090T and GTX970 SLI or FX-8350 upgrade?
I think this is one for @Quizzical but all are free to help me out...
In games like Black Desert online I can't max out the settings during a world boss fight because of the (graphical?) lag caused by all the effects going on. I realize that the 1090T is already a somewhat *LOL* older CPU, and I hear from other players in BDO who have an OC i5 or i7 that their FPS in general is almost double that of mine (not complaining with 25-30 FPS in Calpheon though).
Now I'm wondering if adding a 2nd GTX970 would totally be a waste of money for performance and that I'd rather spend half that money on a CPU upgrade...
In games like Black Desert online I can't max out the settings during a world boss fight because of the (graphical?) lag caused by all the effects going on. I realize that the 1090T is already a somewhat *LOL* older CPU, and I hear from other players in BDO who have an OC i5 or i7 that their FPS in general is almost double that of mine (not complaining with 25-30 FPS in Calpheon though).
Now I'm wondering if adding a 2nd GTX970 would totally be a waste of money for performance and that I'd rather spend half that money on a CPU upgrade...
Comments
This chart might help you:
Edit: I forgot to mention that your CPU might bottleneck you GFX card so don't see the chart as a fact for your computer but more as a hint.
I'll certainly wait till next year and see what the AMD Zen will be like (other than benchmarks, which are much like VW diesel test results
There's always a discussion on how well SLI works or not compared to a single GPU. When I look at the chart, an increase of roughly 25% would not be really worth it though. Perhaps like last time I gotta skip the one series and wait for the 11x0 serie to come out...
And yeah, I'm aware that my CPU is totally bottlenecking the GPU in Black Desert (I tend to freeze for half a second from time to time when I race with my T7 horse on max speed...). It's one of the few games where it's really happening. Most other games I play the performance is about on-par with other systems. I guess the architecture/engine of BDO is just so different that it does need a balanced CPU/GPU system.
And that sounds exactly like what you are describing.
Further upgrading your GPU would not make the computer faster as much as it would make it more unbalanced.
Like that useless GTX1060 "benchmark" that was conducted by this site which consisted of running alone around starting area as a nice example lol
I can give you and example, a bit older one. GW2 Lions Arch (old)
Fx8300 @ 4GHz - ~30 FPS
i53570k @ stock 3.8 GHz ~36 FPS
but when you ran out to north area you wold get ~120 FPS with i5 vs 90 FPS with 8300.
Also, make sure you turn off "high end mode" in settings. It gives you a massive FPS boost and the game looks exactly the same.
One thing you can do to increase your performance for free is to optimize your computer. Particularly should you see what programs that start with Windows and have that kept to a minimum. Anything stealing precious CPU power should be carefully considered, only have programs you must have to start on reboot. That could be of little matter but I seen many cases where windows start up a load of crap that suck precious resources (I am looking on you, Google toolbar and Adobe updater).
Here is the CPU chart BTW:
As you can see is the game more optimized for Intel then AMD for some reason even if they don't have your specific CPU (I had the same 2 1/2 years ago before getting a Haswell-E CPU, it was a rather acceptable one for the price when it was new).
Also, there are a lot of people saying that it is CPU heavy, more then a few said it was about the same as GW2 but it might be that it is AMD users that say that. Some games just work better on one or the other manufacturer.
Anyways, my guess is that the CPU is your largest problem, not the GFX card.
If you want a faster GPU, don't add a second GTX 970 in SLI. Get rid of the GTX 970 you have and get a single faster card instead. I generally argue that you need to at least double your GPU performance to justify an upgrade, which would put you in GeForce GTX 1080 territory. At least some of the coming AMD Vega cards are likely to be faster than that, too, but they're not out yet.
That said, I see no good reason to upgrade your video card unless you insist on fairly extreme graphical settings. A single GTX 970 is a rather capable card as it is. I'd look more at the CPU side of things as the priority for an upgrade.
I would go for a mid priced I7 who work excellent in the game, no need to get the most expensive since it would just bottleneck you at the GPU instead.
That is just for BDO, if you play other CPU heavy games as well you will need to take that into account as well but for BDO it is Intel all the way.
Even the best current AMD performs like an I5 in the game, this is a CPU heavy game optimized for Intel so getting anything else is a risk, at least until anyone can find a good benchmark test for Zen Vs the I7 CPUs.
Of course, if OP is in no hurry it might still be a good idea to wait until a comparison is out, the Zen might work a lot better in the game then any other AMD CPU but I wouldn't bet any money on it.
It's best to wait until the Ryzen CPUs and switch platforms like what Quizzical said. If the CPU is the bottleneck then switching platforms is the only real solution.
Just look at some old(er) games, you would say that now after 10 years they should run in thousands of FPS but they still drag at 40-50 FPS just like they did 10 years ago.
The FX 8350 is a generally better CPU though, just not for that specific game and since that is the one OP wants to upgrade for he should go Intel or possibly wait for the new AMD CPU.
One could wonder why the AMD CPUs perform so badly in BDOs engine though, it is clearly rather crappy coding. That the later I7 outperforms them is one thing but even the cheaper I5s? They seriously needs to optimize the game still.