Upgrade GPU or CPU first?

[LET JIMMY RAID]

Hi all,

I build my PC two years ago, and things are starting to slow down (in WoW, I just moved to a highpop server and world bosses with 40+ people REALLY lag me).

Here's my current specs:
PSU: CoolerMaster 1000W (80+ bronze)
Mobo: ASRock Z68 extreme3gen3
CPU: i5 2500k
GPU: MSI Twin Frozr II OC GeForce GTX570 (Fermi) 1280MB
RAM: 4x4gb corsair vengeance ddr3 1600
SSD1: crucial m4 128gb
SSD2: samsung 840 series 120gb


I had my CPU OC'd to 4.4GHz until about a month ago when I noticed my in-game CPU temps were around 45-50C, which seemed much too high for my liking, so I un-overclocked it.

My GPU I've OC'd a bit in the MSI Afterburner, and haven't changed any OC settings since I bought it at the end of 2011.

I'm not sure if my in-game lag during stress environments is from my GPU not being up to par, or my CPU bottlenecking my GPU. Any advice?

If you were me, and you could only afford to upgrade ONE of these two currently, which would you choose?

[Fluorescent0]

45-50°C is totally fine. I'm usually at 60-65 while gaming. Overclock your CPU back and see if you still want to upgrade.

[Idrinkwhiterussians]

What Fluo said.

Also, if you were to upgrade the CPU, you might need to upgrade the MB also. The GPU should be fine for WoW (barring come crazy crap being wrong with it), but if you want to play other games also, you might want to upgrade that for max graphics.

[Deleted]

step one , reset the overclock on the cpu , those temps are actually pretty low.
step two , provide more details as what you want to achieve with the upgrade and for which games. (a budget would help allot)

[LET JIMMY RAID]

Well, I suppose I should have added that I like to stream 1080p on twitch while raiding. After re-OCing my CPU back to 4.4GHz it's running fine at 50C. I wasn't having any more frame issues while streaming in 10m today, but I'll put it to the test against world bosses tomorrow.

Primarily I play/stream WoW, but also do some counterstrike, minecraft, diablo and a few others that aren't extremely taxing on my hardware. I also do some video editing/rendering, lots of audio mixing, which so far have been running fine.

In terms of budget, I can probably allot $400 to one upgrade, but I'd probably be better off waiting until Cyber Monday sales. I agree that if I were to upgrade CPU, I'd definitely have to replace the mobo as well (this mobo doesn't have usb3.0 which is a real downer...)

[potis]

Any upgrade is a waste of money, you wont see any real improvement, maybe with a new GPU you might gain some FPS cause it can handle the fluff better, but its a waste of money too.

People forget how WoW is programmed and that its an old game and expect 200 FPS during a world boss.

No PC can do that, just realize the difference between 10 people and 50 people and what Shadows do.

Scale the Shadows down during World bosses and you wont have any issue.

The only gain you will have by upgrading , is maybe 5 FPS from your GPU cause it can handle Shadows better.

And sorry to sound insulting, but saying 50C is high shows your lack of knowledge on the matter, considering SB reaches "okay temperature is high" after 85C, and dangerous at 95C.

Just turn the shadows down.

[LET JIMMY RAID]

While I don't really know much about what sandy bridges can handle, what alarmed me about the temperatures was that when my system was new, CPU temp while OC'd and under load was always right around 30C. No additional hardware added, no weather/environmental changes, no real change in day-to-day usage, so a 20 degree jump was a bit shocking to me.

Definitely will knock my shadow quality down, didn't really put 2-and-2 together with shadows and large amounts of people in one area. Thanks!

[aggixx]

A 2500k is actually pretty reasonable for WoW, like potis said, you're not going to be able to build a rig that doesn't lag in the situation you describe. Sure you might be able to drop a couple hundred dollars or more and get something that is noticeably better than your current setup, but the lag will still be there and it will still be pretty extreme.

[Deleted]

dankest - worst case scenario, get a good-quality thermal paste and TIM-cleaner, and re-apply to the processor. Allow it to "bake-in".

Alternatively, if you turn shadows down, you should be fine (perhaps upgrade to the upcoming Radeon Rx series of GPUs coming out next month, price-permitting.

[Sorphius]

While I don't really know much about what sandy bridges can handle, what alarmed me about the temperatures was that when my system was new, CPU temp while OC'd and under load was always right around 30C. No additional hardware added, no weather/environmental changes, no real change in day-to-day usage, so a 20 degree jump was a bit shocking to me.

If you haven't done it yet, blow your fan and heatsink out with compressed air. A lot of gunk builds up over two years that'll really screw with its ability to effectively dissipate heat.

You may also look into scraping off and re-applying the thermal paste, but that's probably not as big a problem after just two years as dust buildup.

[LET JIMMY RAID]

Thanks for the advice everyone!

If you haven't done it yet, blow your fan and heatsink out with compressed air. A lot of gunk builds up over two years that'll really screw with its ability to effectively dissipate heat.

You may also look into scraping off and re-applying the thermal paste, but that's probably not as big a problem after just two years as dust buildup.

I make sure to blow out my internals a few times a week with duster, but it's been at least a year since I've reapplied thermal paste. I'm sure I have some arctic silver around somewhere.

[glo]

While I don't really know much about what sandy bridges can handle, what alarmed me about the temperatures was that when my system was new, CPU temp while OC'd and under load was always right around 30C. No additional hardware added, no weather/environmental changes, no real change in day-to-day usage, so a 20 degree jump was a bit shocking to me.

Definitely will knock my shadow quality down, didn't really put 2-and-2 together with shadows and large amounts of people in one area. Thanks!

You must have been mistaken. There's no way SB under load was only running 30c unless you're running liquid nitrogen or something else of the sort. He'll, you'd be lucky if it even idled at 30 on air.