Want to upgrade my computer for this game, need some advice.

[Krindor]

It's powerful enough to run it on 30-40fps. I ran this game on a GTX660, 8gb ram and a i7 3770k till february and it ran fine. Not like this game gives you benefits playing on 60fps. also if you consider his budget being 300-500, then it's the obvious choice to not touch the gpu till later when he has more money to spend. I can pretty much vouch for saying that the gtx 960 would be able to run this game on 60fps constantly. Though, if he's going for a gpu in the 200-400 range, it's gonnabe either the 380 or the 390, because those blow it out of the park. I own a 390 myself atm, and it's maybe 61 degrees in a crowded area or in void ark, lower when there isnt as much to render.

When changing systems, you actually want to work on the full system, instead of just the gpu, since those tend to cost more than most components combined. Also a 300+ costing gpu will bottleneck with the fx6300. So it's cpu/mobo > ram (if you can't reuse) > gpu. SSD is a luxery item in a gaming build. It's not a must have.

Personally I have noticed a big difference between running it at 40 FPS and 60 FPS, also running the HW benchmark i average at 35 FPS, this with a 3770k OCd to 4.5 ghz. The CPU isn't going to make that big of a difference except for in areas like Idyll and around hunts. Any content where a FPS drop is affecting the content itself is during raid where the GPU is the one doing most work as there aren't that many players to rend. Also just to add in, in idyll I drop to around 20 FPS. Therefore a GPU is going to be a better choice than a CPU. Also based on the 3dmark physics score the difference is about 20% between the 3770 and fx 6300. Also the difference between the 4950 and 6300 is around 3-5%. So buying a new CPU/mobo is going to cost the same as a new GPU and give him around a 20% increase in performance while a GPU is going to give around 100%-150% increase in performance.