Phenom II x4 960t 3.2ghz + GTX 650 ti -- bottleneck?

Hi, I'm gonna get from a friend tomorrow this Phenom x4 (not sure if 3.2 Mhz or 3.0 tho) and I wanna know if this build with my GTX and 4gb of ram ddr3 1600 MHz would be enough to play some games (I've been running stuff with my dual core lately). I wanna know too if would be worth OC the Phenom or the GTX (using EVGA precision) to avoid a bottleneck. I mainly wanna play old stuff, like Mass Effect 3, Tree of Savior, Diablo 3, Civilization 5/6. About newest games, I was hoping to maybe play Mass effect Andromeda, Tales of Berseria and Dark Souls III on minimum, but that's about it.

Add info: the Phenom is 5 years old tho, the GTX 2 or 3 and the power source is 500w.

Just so I don't make another post... I'm gonna change the motherboard tomorrow too, will I have to re-install OS too? Or can I keep it as it is and just refresh or something so it'll install the new drives ( I'm using Windows 10).

Thanks in advance!
 
Likely to be 'ok' with older games - if too slow, drop display resolution - depends on which GTX (usually needs 2GB VRAM) - RAM is a little small - 6 or 8 GB would be better. I hesitate to recommend OC on an oldish machine. Check on Steam for specific requirements for the games you want to play.

When you put it in you might not need a clean install (search on this), but I always do a clean install so I know where stuff came from. Your Windows10 license may be 'ok' as this is a "repair" (right?) - you are keeping some of the older stuff including case and PSU. It will probably take a phone call to get straight.
 
If you are coming from intel motherboard, cpu and ram yes you will need to reinstall.
If you are moving up from a dual core am3 system you won't need to worry much.
Half of those games you want to play, the big name games need more ram 8gb ddr3 1600mhz is a good start

Having a good sized hdd at 500gb+ 7200rpm helps out alot.
I suggest you learn how to safely oc the phenom ii x4 965.
When I had mine years ago,I could push mine to 4.2ghz on a really good air cooler.
Also thermal grease if I had any on hand.
Usually I keep the default clock at 3.4ghz, then let the mobo "msi" auto overclock to 3.9ghz.
I suggest in the next 6 months by next janurary-feburary make plans to get a better cpu and mobo.
Preferably LGA 1150-1151 socket.
 
Last edited:
The 650 ti is likely to be the bottleneck. Phenom II x4s are pretty decent processors even today. I'm fairly certain that it could even handle up to a gtx 1050ti pretty well.
 
If you can up the budget for the ram, go for 8GB. I had played with my system with 4GB and it was painful.
 
Back