He could get to AH 1080p on a monitor I'd think just fine with that RIG. It's not so far down the ladder like it was a P4 or something! Getting the memory straightened out will certainly help. VR would probably be right out tho if only because of the video card. I have a 1060 and VR with that just didn't cut it. Even AH would drift to slide show at times. I upgraded at the time to 2060 and that works fine and in VR too. Built a new PC last year and the idea was to go to a 30 series in the fall when the new cards came out. Yeah but we all know what happened there! Still running the 2060 on a 3900x rig. Dang miners!
I see the specs for that mobo allow for 4 sticks of PC3600 memory and has XMP. As I said last post try to find a decent 16 or 32gb two stick kit of 3600 ram and be sure to enable XMP in the bios. Pretty good rule is that 2 sticks are better than 1 and 2 sticks are better than 4. Not a typo. Go with a pair. And put them in the correct slots. It's important. Check your mobo manual. That will be a good start and be FAR cheaper than trying to update the other components, especially the video card, which you need most after that. They're just godawful expensive right now and not worth putting into that rig IMO.
After that there are other free things you can do to wring out more performance. Cut down on the processes running in the background. Google Blackviper's guides for your OS. It'll give you a list of everything that is running on an install of that OS and if it really needs to be running or not. Killing off a lot of the bs processes in windows can free up a lot of clock cycles and memory. This is SOP on every PC I've had for many years. It works and it's free. After that look at the other services and crap that's running at startup from programs you've installed and try killing them too. EVERYTHING doesn't need to be running in the background eating up your CPU, RAM and net bandwidth phoning home every five minutes while you're playing when you need all the excess horsepower you can get. It's like drag on your plane! If you don't know what a service is, Google it and find out. If it's something stupid, disable it or make it manual start.
You can try overclocking, which is also free, but you should know there are dangers involved with that if you don't know what you're doing. Edjumacate yourself before attempting this. In either the CPU or GPU you'll need superior cooling for starters. Extra testing and monitoring software is a must. If you have the stock cooler on your CPU don't even try it. If you think you can give it a shot, CPU overclocking happens in the BIOS. You'll have to change a lot of settings and voltages. Do not change these if you don't know what they are! It can be tricky and not all rigs respond identically to an OC so don't find settings on the net and blindly plug them in. Could be disastrous! This isn't something that is quickly explained. Google is your friend. Put aside a LOT of time for testing. No magic way of doing it.
Overclocking the video card is a lot easier. MSI Afterburner will do it almost automatically. Check it out.
Just a couple of things you can do to wring out what extra performance you can get out of that older PC. It's basically what I've done to stretch from one rig to another not being one that builds a PC every other year.
My last rig before the 3900x was a 2010 build and has been "retired" to the wife's work from home PC. All stock now for longevity.
Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk