Advice on system upgrade

[BaldEagl]

I'd go with an Intel processor.  Even a highly clocked I3 if you can't afford an I5 but I'd stick with the 970 video card.  You could easily get by with 2x4Gb RAM to save a little money.  I've got 16Gb DDR4 3200 and rarely use more than 19% of available memory.

A couple of late notes:  If you do go Intel look for a motherboard with a Z series chipset.  Depending on which generation technology you opt for the Z97 RAM sweet spot is DDR3 1600 while the Z100's is DDR4 2400.  For the same amount of money you can build similar performing systems on either platform but upgradability will be longer with the newer technology.

[Bizman]

With this said do I really need a better CPU?

The clock rate of your choice is very good. However, in the past AMD processors weren't able to use more than one core in AH. For what I've understood the issue hasn't been totally solved, or at least it's poorly documented which processors work and which don't. In that light Intel might be a safer choice.

As BaldEagl said, even a highly clocked I3 would do perfectly well. It's a dual core one, which is sufficient for both AH2 and AH3. Changing the processor and motherboard in your pcpartpicker list raised the total to ~$840.

[bortas1]

Only to keep the initial cost as low as possible. I plan to add another 8GB very soon.
How much of a performance increase would the additional RAM give?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

rgr that