Advice on CPU + Mobo

So I'm thinking of upgrading my CPU and possibly Mobo sometime in the near future. I have a suspicion that my gaming performance is being bottlenecked by my CPU since I recently bought myself a Radeon 4870 and barely noticed a difference in FPS.

I currently have an AMD 4400 X2 with an A8N-SLI Deluxe Mobo (pushing 5 years old both of them). I'm thinking of possibly upgrading my CPU to a quad core as soon as I can cough up the money but i am not 100% sure if I will also need to upgrade my mobo (I just kind of assume I would given how old it is). I also wonder about how am I supposed to know ahead of time if a new mobo would fit in my case?

My knowledge on hardware is pretty limited (mostly limited to RAM and Video cards) as I have never really had to replace a CPU or motherboard, all I have done is taken out my Mobo in order to clean it and replace my chipset fan (which stopped working again) and my CPU fan.

Any advice on these issues would be great :)

Do you mean a radeon 4870?

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Originally Posted by ShitFace

Do you mean a radeon 4870?

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Yes, thanks for pointing that out. Fixed

Does it have to be a AMD mobo and CPU?

Does it need to be an AMD chip? What's your budget?

Are you using DDR2 memory? If not, you'll need new memory since most boards are DD2. But dont worry DDR2 is fucking cheap if that's the case. You have a 64 or 32 bit OS. No point in getting 4gb+ of memory if you are on a 32bit system.

Motherboard will fit if you have an ATX case.

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Originally Posted by Nick2.1

Does it have to be a AMD mobo and CPU?

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No, it doesn't have to be.

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Originally Posted by SneeBeezums

Does it need to be an AMD chip? What's your budget?

Are you using DDR2 memory? If not, you'll need new memory since most boards are DD2. But dont worry DDR2 is fucking cheap if that's the case. You have a 64 or 32 bit OS. No point in getting 4gb+ of memory if you are on a 32bit system.

Motherboard will fit if you have an ATX case.

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I have a 64 bit OS. I am not sure what my memory is, I can check when I get home.

Considering I can't afford anything at the moment I would take an educated guess at my budget and say maybe 500$? I will just have to save up a bit when I start summer work to be able to afford it. From the looks of it I may have to upgrade my CPU + mobo + RAM (depending on what type of RAM I currently have?)

Oh and I just looked it up yesterday, I have an Athlon 4400 CPU, not 3400 (which doesn't exist as dual core)

Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128358

CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115036

Memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231166

Grand total: $377.97 (American w/o shipping).

If this is for gaming the dual core will do just fine. The motherboard will support a quad core if you want to go ahead and sub that out:

Quad CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115055

The board also supports a faster memory. I would recommend this if you wanna max out your memory speed:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231179

Bit more expensive and you probably won't see that big of a difference in speed. Which 64 bit OS you using? I hope it's not XP because from what I understand XP 64 is awful. I have 64bit Vista and it runs decent after a bit of tweaking.

Yeah I am running Windows XP64...it took me some tweaking to get it going fine but ever since I have had no issues with it.

Thanks for the info, I will look into it


I think I may need to buy a new case as well. 2 of the fans in my case have died now so the air flow is probably shitty now. Any recommendations on that?


Also, in terms of CPU...what are your thoughts on the i7?

The i7s will rape every other processor on the market. But it's expensive. ~290 for the processor, ~200 for a motherboard, and ~150 or so for cheap 4gb of DDR3.

The Antec 900 is a great case. A lot of my friends have it. I like the Thermaltake ElementS. No personal experience with it but I plan on purchasing it.

If you are going to get a quad core, I'd suggest the Q6600(I have one at 3.6GHz)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115017

The EP45-UD3P motherboard is what I have and it has great overclocking abilities.

I'd also suggest a CPU cooler for future use.