PC build questions

[CrazyCracka420]

A friend of mine asked me to help upgrade their computer, these are their current specs (looking for opinions on what to upgrade):

CPU
    AMD Phenom II X4 810

Graphics
    1024MB NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250

RAM
    8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3

SATA hard drive, SCSI optical drives.

His motherboard doesn't support AM3+.

I was thinking of steering him to buy a new motherboard that will support DDR3 memory, PCI E 3.0 graphics, and AM3+ CPU.  And then upgrade his GPU and CPU. 

What I'm wondering (besides if this is a good recommendation), is it worth it to upgrade to PCI E 3.0, or to keep his 2.0 card?  His 2.0 card is a little on the weak side, but I have a similar card and can play games without any issues.  If he were to upgrade to a beefier GPU, it would make sense to get on the PCI E 3.0 technology. 

Give me your thoughts please!  Is it even worth upgrading his computer for a better CPU/GPU?  He has a 600-700$ budget, but I guess I don't see him getting a huge performance increase (aside from his quad core AMD only running at 2.6 ghz)

[CrazyCracka420]

After thinking about this some more, I don't think it's worth him upgrading at the moment.  His CPU could be faster speed, but I don't think it's worth upgrading his whole system.

I'm going to recommend he keep his system, and bump up to 16 GB of memory and buy a solid state hard drive if he wants to spend some money and get more performance.

With DDR4 around the corner, it may make sense to upgrade his mobo/cpu/gpu/memory at that time, but right now I think it would be a waste of money.

[cmp]

The PCIe revision means nothing, it's all about the graphics card model. With a 700$ budget he should be able to get CPU+GPU 3 times faster (or more) than what he has currently.

[CrazyCracka420]

Yes his CPU could certainly use an increase.  But his GPU is 1gb memory size, 256mb memory interface.  Going up to 2gb memory size isn't going to really do anything for him I don't think.  I think he'd only be upgrading mainly for a better CPU, which I don't know if that's really necessary (because then I'd suggest he goes with a mobo that supports PCIe 3.0, meaning he'd need a new GPU, which I don't think he needs from a performance perspective). 

[cmp]

Yes his CPU could certainly use an increase.  But his GPU is 1gb memory size, 256mb memory interface.  Going up to 2gb memory size isn't going to really do anything for him I don't think.

It's all about the chipset, not the memory. 1GB is pointless on a card like that, the only reason why it's there is to fool people into thinking it's better than other low end models (because higher number).
Memory interface width by itself means absolutely nothing, when comparing graphics cards you should look at stuff like pixel rate, texel rate, memory bandwidth and floating point performance.

I think he'd only be upgrading mainly for a better CPU, which I don't know if that's really necessary (because then I'd suggest he goes with a mobo that supports PCIe 3.0, meaning he'd need a new GPU, which I don't think he needs from a performance perspective).

PCIe is retrocompatible.

[CrazyCracka420]

thanks for the info (and custom user title) cmp, good shit here

Think now I'm going to suggest he upgrade his motherboard so he can get a better CPU.  And have him keep trying to use his PCIe 2.0 graphics card for now (at least test it out, and then upgrade if he still wants to after the fact). 

New question, do you think it's worth keeping an AMD chipset, or switching over to Intel?  I've heard intel is much better than AMD these days, but I was always a firm believer in buying a beefier AMD CPU (than you would have bought compared to Intel) and saving a lot of money.  I've always liked my AMD cpus.

Looks like PCIe 3 is only on Intel mobos, so maybe will steer him towards Intel CPU

[CrazyCracka420]

This is what I'm recommending he go with (depending on whether he needs hyper-threading for video editing or not is why I have two different CPUs):

mobo - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128555 ($70)

CPU - i7 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116502 ($290)

CPU - i5 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504 ($210 after $10 off promo code)

Graphics card:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130933 ($250)

Also recommending this memory (to bump him up to 16 GB):  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104301 ($65)

[Kafein]

I'm buying this exact graphics card in 4Gb version right now.

Also make sure the exact same memory sticks are used on all slots