I have an old hp system, a core 2 quad q8400. It has 8 gigs of ddr3 ram, an upgraded power supply (evga bronze 600w), and an r9 290 graphics card. My main machine is a core i5 3570k at 4ghz, 24 gigs ddr3 ram, and an r9 390. My wife has been using the core 2 quad for awhile now as a gaming machine, and I never paid much attention because she played skyrim and civ 5 which ran fine on the machine. But recently I tried to play fallout 4 and I saw a big difference vs my machine. After running benchmarks I found that hers is about 50% slower than mine. Only thing I can point to and say "that's the culprit" is the old processor / mb setup.
Since I can't overclock (mb is generic hp) that leads me to a full upgrade / swap out of mb and processor. I don't mind buying used (fully expect to actually) but I don't want to spend more than 100$. What would you suggest? It doesn't need to be a k processor, or able to overclock, but I was looking at i7 920ish with mb on ebay and it seemed to be the closest thing in my price range that would give a boost.
Note this machine is only used for gaming or watching videos. Hooked up to a 1080p tv.
Since I can't overclock (mb is generic hp) that leads me to a full upgrade / swap out of mb and processor. I don't mind buying used (fully expect to actually) but I don't want to spend more than 100$. What would you suggest? It doesn't need to be a k processor, or able to overclock, but I was looking at i7 920ish with mb on ebay and it seemed to be the closest thing in my price range that would give a boost.
Note this machine is only used for gaming or watching videos. Hooked up to a 1080p tv.
![]-[itman](/forums/data/avatars/s/9/9309.jpg?1650325391){kind=avatar}
