Benchmark is telling us something...

[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.

[Jpec07]

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.

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.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

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.

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

[StarRosie]

...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.

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. :>