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Upgrading PC, Improving Gaming Performance

Oct 14, 2018 4:42PM PDT

Hello and thanks for taking the time to read or answer my questions. I am planning on upgrading my PC and was looking for suggestions on what to upgrade next. I have a budget of about £250 and my current PC specs are listed below:

Operating System : Windows 10
Motherboard: ASUSTek Computer INC. P8H61-M Pro (5 years old)
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500 3300 (5 years old)
GPU: GTX 1060 6GB (less than a year old)
RAM: 2x4GB DDR3-1333 (PC3-10600) SDRAM (Kingston) (about as old as the PC)
HDD: Hitachi HDS5C3020ALA632 (Approx 1.8GB) (came with PC 7 years old)

Currently, I am getting 30+ FPS on games like ARMA 3 and SCUM, not what I would expect for this setup. I am worried that my CPU or old motherboard may be bottlenecking my GPU, or my lack of extra RAM may be causing large frame drops (10 FPS) when looking about. I was planning to upgrade my motherboard to something like the [Asus B150 Pro] and getting 1x16 GB of DDR4 RAM along with it. I can get by with my hard drive at the moment (I know a SSD would be better but not my priority right now), my CPU could be upgraded but that would exceed the budget.

Any suggestions regarding my questions would be appreciated, thanks.

Note: Edited by moderator to clean up extra lines.

Post was last edited on October 15, 2018 8:49 AM PDT

Discussion is locked

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Upgrade
Oct 14, 2018 7:49PM PDT
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System Specs
Oct 15, 2018 7:38AM PDT
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Upgrade
Oct 15, 2018 9:39AM PDT

If you change the mobo you will need to buy also
Cpu
Ram
Windows license

Ram you don't want 1x16GB you want 2x8GB set up in dual channel.

On your current rig nothing much jumps out at me.
I can't say much for driver booster as I don't know what drivers it has fed you.
I get my drivers from the hardware maker and then lock down the machine.

Games or the gpu driver have an OSD that will show you things like cpu/gpu/ram usage.
Watch that and see if something is going busy.

Run this and post a link to the results.
http://www.userbenchmark.com/Software

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A Speccy Reading.
Oct 15, 2018 9:02AM PDT

My first pass of the Speccy looks like a nice enough gamer. The 1060 will do for mid range gaming but you may have to reduce settings in ARMA and such to get 60FPS.

LET ME BE CLEAR. TODAY'S GAMES arrive with the settings optimized for eye candy and not FPS.
Here's an example optimization search for ARMA:
-> https://www.google.com/search?q=arma+3+optimization+FPS

I'll follow up with a Speccy reading but first, even if you upgrade your GPU to the 1070 or 1080 I find the FPS will still be 30 to 60 FPS since the games auto-tailor to the GPU and again, set up for best eye candy over FPS.

On to the Speccy:

1. Driver Booster. REMOVE. This is a great way to have a good PC one day and awful the next.
Read https://www.howtogeek.com/233115/the-only-way-to-safely-update-your-hardware-drivers-on-windows/

2. A few SVCHOST and IP connections too many. Be sure to turn the following OFF.
Read https://www.howtogeek.com/224981/how-to-stop-windows-10-from-uploading-updates-to-other-pcs-over-the-internet/

3. When it is a good time, bring the BIOS up to date:
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8H61M_PRO/HelpDesk_BIOS/
What's in this system is far out of date.

4. HDD looks to be OK to great shape.
For performance without high cost, shop for the 240 to 500GB SSD.

5. The DNS is the router. Try setting your own DNS. I used DNSBENCH (see google) to optimize my choices.

All in all a clean machine. My bet is you need to optimize your game settings.