Benchmark is telling us something...

For the price of a PS4 you could buy a motherboard, new cpu and ram. If those aren't the parts that are struggling in your system you could just buy a GPU instead for the same price or less than the cost of a new PS4 system that will be powerful enough to play FFXIV.

PS4 = $299.99
PS4 Pro = $399.99

CPU - $189.99
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16819113436

Motherboard - $59.99
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16813132977

RAM - $59.99
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16820232512

Total: $309.97

Chances are your current GPU and Power Supply are still adequate enough unless it's a GPU that barely ever reached the minimum system requirements for ARR/SB to begin with and if that's the case there are affordable GPU's out there that are more than capable of running SB in the $90-$130 range. Re-use your case, PSU, system fans, hard drives, dvd drive to conserve money in the budget. Although a new case would only be $20-$30 more.

My rig is about 7 years old, the only new part in it is the 980 GTX Ti, scored a nice 13.5k on the benchmark. Seems its putting most of the strain on the GPU. I mean if someone is packing a 7 year old i3 then sure, they may need to upgrade but I have an old i7 CPU and it handled this just fine.

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Originally Posted by Ghastly

Replacing a cpu isn't something a lot of us could do
And it's not just any part..it's the cpu that stormblood is really asking a lot of

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A good CPU is cheaper than a PS4.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

A good CPU is cheaper than a PS4.

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Pretty much any decent quad-core CPU released in the past 3-4 years should be fine and the new AMD Ryzen CPU's are in the budget friendly range. It's mostly the people on really old AMD CPU's and old intel i3's that seem to be getting the short straw here.

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Originally Posted by ToasterMan

Yeah I'm with this too. I know you're just talking about CPU's here but I think with everyone that found out they needed to upgrade wouldn't need just a new a new CPU. They would need a graphics card, in which a decent one would run you about 200-400 dollars. If the machines are REALLY old, then they might need to get a new motherboard, new ram, etc. I spent about 1500 dollars building the computer I have right now and that was a little under 3 years ago. If it got to that point, I'd personally recommend just getting a PS4 if you don't care playing the game with high end hardware.

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I've spent around 1800 on my pc and don't even use it for 14, since the only thing I've really noticed is it helps load times, graphically the game is pretty standard across the board since they don't have any hi res packs for the game. I have a pspro and it runs 14 just as well, and I would say is likely the better choice to run the game on.

Honestly I don't really see the need to use high end graphics on my pc either, it's great for show, but I started out on Quake, running the game low on graphics, forcing everyone to be blue or green in my settings so they pop out in the arena, made the game great. I'll even do that in Battlefield, think hiding in that dark corner is giving you an advantage? Let me tinker with my settings and that corner isn't so dark anymore lol.

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Originally Posted by StarRosie

My rig is about 7 years old, the only new part in it is the 980 GTX Ti, scored a nice 13.5k on the benchmark. Seems its putting most of the strain on the GPU. I mean if someone is packing a 7 year old i3 then sure, they may need to upgrade but I have an old i7 CPU and it handled this just fine.

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This is exactly my experience. CPU throttling isn't going to affect 90% of the population as much as GPU throttling, and picking up an RX480/580 will probably do MUCH more to help most users' experiences than upgrading a CPU.

It's only enthusiasts who are going to benefit from higher-grade hardware or super-high performance (read: people playing on 120hz+ monitors or at 2K+ resolutions). Most normal gamers at 60fps 1080/FHD won't see the benefit of anything above that 7000 mark.

...though I DO recommend considering upgrading your CPU. Building computers is fun, and we need more people doing it so I can have more people to geek out over hardware with.

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Originally Posted by seraf

Pretty much any decent quad-core CPU released in the past 3-4 years should be fine and the new AMD Ryzen CPU's are in the budget friendly range. It's mostly the people on really old AMD CPU's and old intel i3's that seem to be getting the short straw here.

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Seems right. When I did the bench mark I got around a little over 14000 and like I said my computer is a little under 3 years old. I wasn't running it at max settings though. It's just that when I upgrade something, I want to be sure that what I have can play any game that I would want to play. I'm always concerned about future proofing too. I don't want to have to go back frequently for upgrades because I find myself constantly getting left behind.

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Originally Posted by Jpec07

This is exactly my experience. CPU throttling isn't going to affect 90% of the population as much as GPU throttling, and picking up an RX480/580 will probably do MUCH more to help most users' experiences than upgrading a CPU.

...though I DO recommend considering upgrading your CPU. Building computers is fun, and we need more people doing it so I can have more people to geek out over hardware with.

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Any of the FX processors will bottleneck a decent current GPU. Those things were and are garbage. Heck anything past the phenom II's to the current ryzen from AMD is garbage lol

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Originally Posted by Jpec07

...though I DO recommend considering upgrading your CPU. Building computers is fun, and we need more people doing it so I can have more people to geek out over hardware with.

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I don't know if this last part was pointed at me but...I agree, saving to do another large upgrade to future proof for another 7 years. Building PCs is fun as heck though! Most of my friends call on me to put all the PC parts they order into a fully functioning rig. I either get paid or given free food for it. It's nice. :>

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Originally Posted by Driavna

More stuff per scene.

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I see I see.