Preparing PC for Stormblood

As the title suggests, I'm looking to upgrade my PC for Stormblood. I'm looking to reduce the framerate drops when playing, but I know little to nothing about computers. Funny, seeing as I spend all my free time on the internet for the past 14 years. But hey, can't know everything.

GeForce GTX 650
AMD A8-6500 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
3.5 GHz
8.0 GB
Microsoft Windows 10 (build 14393), 64-bit

I'm not sure what to look into upgrading, and I'm only working with about $500. If anyone can point me in the right direction to raise my consistent fps in preperation for Stormblood, I'd greatly appreciate it.

That's a tough question, my biggest issue with frame drops was in populated areas where alot of people had to be rendered and upgrading the CPU is usually the biggest improvement.

A few questions before I can make suggestions,
Where are you experience the frame drops? (ex. cities, out in the open, duties)
Do you know what type of case you have? (ex. ATX, MicroATX, Mini-ITX)
Do you know any information about your current motherboard?

If you can use your current case and power supply that will lower the cost, but replacing the motherboard will required a reinstall of windows and a new license if the key you have is from a prebuilt machine such as Dell, HP etc.

A few options I found just browsing

If you could use your old power supply and case and wouldn't need to purchase a new license for Windows,this is the cheapest and most powerful.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ntDJWX

If you wanted a pre-built that would be plug and play:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/cybertro...?skuId=5844400

http://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/desktop...H/p/90DG002UUS

I'm at work atm, so I can't really reply on any information about the case and motherboard. I know I upgraded my CPU once already, back during 2.05 just so I was able to play the game.

I experience most of my framerate drops just about anywhere. I'll be standing in the housing district of Mist, and it'll be anywhere between 35 - 40 fps, only using high laptop settings. Idyllshire is pretty bad all the time, but I get the feeling it's that way for almost everyone.

Dungeons and raids seem to be fine and run around 50 fps consistently. My computer isn't HORRIBLE ... I just want to improve it to run better frames outside of instances for when the new expansion comes out with it's updated requirements. Want to run the graphics a tad bit higher so I can experience more of what's there in the new zones as smoothly as my budget can allow.

I'm no tech expert either, but I used to run the game on 650ti with an i5 4460, and the game improved a lot when I changed my graphics card. gtx 1060 is great if it's just FPS you're after. I'm getting up to 90ish FPS in idyllshire on 1080p with it.
got 10k points in SB benchmark. 1060 also has the best performance for people with older systems like mine, who's looking for an upgrade, and it has the closest compatibility with my components like my old 650ti. basically, I didn't need to upgrade anything else because if my system worked on 650ti it should run 1060. high end cards like 1070 would require that I overhaul. hope that helps :)

You will get your best bang for your buck upgrading the GPU, the 1060 is at a great price point and will work. A solution for idlyshire would be turning the amount of characters the game renders down to normal or try minimum. Loading alot of characters causes CPU stress an issues I had till I upgraded.

built an old pc for a friend consisting of a 1st gen Xeon (i7 equivalent). Paid $75 for board, chip and 8gb ram, not each but all together. DDR3, went with an SSD, threw a GTX 980 that I found for $175, and it ran this game really well scoring over 11k on the stormblood benchmark using 1080p @ maximum.