Hi Guys, I am pretty sure this question has not been asked previously, least I hope not. I am using an Intel i-3 processor. My motherboard is a Asus H81M-P PLUS and my graphics card is a Nvidia Gforce 1030. I wonder if anyone could advise me about upgrading my processor. Would I have to upgrade the Motherboard as well and would the Graphics card be ok with any up grade. I would appreciate any advice I can get. I also realise my specs are not very high. Cheers in advance. Locky777
Your Core i3-4150 is 2 core 4 threads CPU. If you want to feel any difference skip 4th gen of Core i5 CPUs and go straight to 4 core 8 threads 4th gen Core i7s, i7-4770 or i7-4790, second hand of course if you can find one for reasonable price. i7-4770K and i7-4790K will do the job too but you can't benefit at all from using K ones (unlocked for overclock) because H81 chipset based motherboards have no CPU multiplier OC capabilities. Also... Disable Spectre and Meldown mitigations with inSpectre #8 (restart OS after that), it'll improve CPU performanse a bit.
Find a cheap 4770 even a locked one would be fine since you dont have overclocking capable motherboard.
Yes, this, if at all possible budget wise. I have always thought it's not wise to invest more money in ancient hardware, unless it's a stupidly cheap deal. After all, even if you invest more in it, it's still going to be ancient hardware, which is worthless if you want to upgrade again later. However, if you are able to move on to the 12th gen, you can still upgrade a whole lot in the future, using the existing parts.
I see you are in the UK. Try this instead Intel Xeon E3-1241 v3 equivalent to i74770 3.5GHz 4C 8T LGA 1150 80W | eBay Cheaper than the i7 but the same performance. Make sure to update your BIOS to the latest version from ASUS before you swap out the CPU. H81M-P PLUS - Support (asus.com) It's true that new kit will be better but this CPU would get you a very significant upgrade (probably 2x the raw CPU power of your current chip) for very little money.
At the end it all comes down to the fact how much CPU performace uplift OP needs/expects from simple CPU upgrade. And of course how much he is willing to spend. If he wants a bit more stable fps in games who are choking with 4 threaded 4150 then 4770 and 4790 are going to do a pretty good job to push 1030 to its limits and quite a bit up the 1% and 0.1% lows in most games. For sure older games less optimised to use more than few CPU cores even 4150 would max out 1030 in these games. With 12100F he can expect single digit % higher max/average fps in games, 1% lows and 0.1% could be quite higher though but it all depends on game engine. But we're talking about 1030 here, spending 300 bucks to upgrade HW to the curent gen and stay with 1030 doesn't make sense. So, if he can find 4770 or 4790 for cheap, lets say 30 to 40 bucks, then it'll be a nice and quick CPU upgrade. With more threads OS, program multitasking and games they'll all benefit from it. Maybe that'll keep him going for few more years. But if OP is willing to spend around 300 bucks to upgrade his PC to current gen + later down the road will invest some more cash to dump 1030 and get a better card then go for 12100F Agent-A01 is suggesting.
Thank you so much Guys. The ideas put to me are very helpfull and interesting. It gives me something to think about. You could not have helped me any more than you did. I do appreciate it. Please regard the post as solved. All the very best.
