Recommended motherboard & CPU upgrades for my gaming computer?

OK, that CPU is compatible, and it's a good one. What do you have currently? The RAM isn't compatible.

For gaming, 16GB of RAM would just be wasting money anyway. More on that later. Your motherboard supports DDR3 1333Mhz and 1066Mhz RAM only- not 1600Mhz.

It's possible that your motherboard might automatically downclock higher-speed RAM and treat it as 1333Mhz, but that's not guaranteed. Moreover, if you install more than two 1333Mhz modules, this particular motherboard treats all of your installed RAM as 1066Mhz. So the maximum you can install and still have memory running at 1333Mhz is a pair of 4GB modules (8GB total).

That's your ideal upgrade. Now for a gaming computer, even 8GB is overkill. Contrary to popular belief, no games in existence utilize more than 4GB of RAM... not even the latest high-end titles like Crysis 2, BF3, Skyrim and Metro 2033!

Having 8GB just makes your computer effectively future-proof for the next 2-3 years, it doesn't improve your fps at all (not even 1 fps more) compared to having 4GB! Where does having more than 4GB of RAM help? For heavy multitasking or running movie editing or 3D design & rendering software.

Software like Sony Vegas, AutoCad, Maya, 3D Studio Max etc uses MUCH more memory than even the most demanding games. 8GB is the baseline for those programs and 16GB is better. But if you're not doing stuff like that, having lots of extra RAM does nothing.

To the extent that faster RAM improves performance, it's just a minor boost for gaming. Going from 1066Mhz to 1333Mhz RAM, or from 1333Mhz to 1600Mhz RAM is only about a 3-5% difference in real-world performance. Which brings us to the big issue.

Performance in games is determined primarily by your computer's graphics card (GPU), not the processor (CPU). The GPU accounts for about 70% of your in-game fps, so that's by far the most important hardware in a gaming build. Even an Athlon II X3 450 paired with a Radeon HD 6870 beats a Phenom II X4 965 paired with Radeon HD 6770.

A Phenom II X4 955 paired with a Radeon HD 6950 beats a Phenom II X6 1100T paired with a Radeon HD 6850. Having the strongest GPU you can afford is the key to maximum gaming performance. If you have a great graphics card (and a power supply to support it) then you've got a great gaming rig.

If you've got a slow low-end graphics card or integrated graphics, it doesn't matter how good your CPU is, because you'd be bottlenecked. Upgrading the CPU has much less impact than upgrading the GPU, and upgrading RAM has almost no impact, unless you currently have less than 4GB installed. Graphics card performance difference: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zotac...

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