hey PC world fans Adam here with Gordon and we get a lot of questions on our
weekly podcast the full nerd and you can send in your questions to the full nerd
at PC world calm a lot of times we get the same questions over and over and
over again so I wanted to take a moment and ask a PC expert one of these
questions particularly so Gordon a lot of people are on older CPUs like the
2600 K and they just want to know is it still good for gaming are they doing
okay and if not what's the CPU you would recommend they upgrade to well I I
generally look Rison seven third gen is faster ninth
gen Intel is faster all kinds of goodness but if you're coming from a
point where you've got a 2600 K and you got a limited budget we're gonna assume
limited budget because yeah if you can go out and buy 3900 X or 900 K hey go do
it right but if you don't get the budget to do that I would say if it were me if
it were a friend I was giving advice to I would say just stick with it you've
got a fixed budget you've got maybe six hundred seven hundred dollars you want
to spend to get you more right yeah if you had a 2600 cane all you had was $600
to do your new system I would stick with a 2600 K it's not gonna give you the
highest frame rates it's not gonna give you the ability to stream at super high
resolutions but it will give you a really great gaming experience and I
would argue that seven hundred to six hundred dollars that you have to burn
and buying a new CPU a new motherboard all the other goodness that you need
probably new cooler to because it's not gonna fit if it doesn't come with it put
that into a graphics card mm-hmm if you are taking a 2700 K with say mmm five
six years ago let's say you've got like a 970 Neven a 980
good card good card yeah but if you go from a 980 to a 2070 super a 5700 XT you
are just gonna be a lot you're gonna get a lot more smiles and you are going from
a 2,600 k2a 3,700 X or 980 generally and
that's just if you're gaming if you mostly a new gaming on right we're not
saying oh they're like tasks right you're not gonna be video editing you're
not gonna be doing three animation stuff let's face it all you do is play games
in this thing you do office you do Chrome new CPUs are great the faster
that you all consecrate those stuff but you're gonna get the most gaming joy out
of a brand new faster GPU in general now if you are going to say hey I want
wincing in 2k I want a 1080p panel at 240 Hertz 20 50 K he's not gonna do it
as well some other CPUs with the fast video card - true but again this sort of
that's the your constraint is your budget if you're talking about in
evacuating that CPU and now what are your GPU what if you have the money you
know and you do other things than gaming and you can step up what's what's a good
what's a good refresh for the 2600 K so my thought is like hey you want to do it
you assume the GPUs are the questions you've already owe upgrade to that or
you're gonna upgrade it what's a good CPU to go for I'm gonna assume because
you have a 2600 K vintage at this point 2012 this range right so you know pretty
old you spent about $329 because that's what Intel's top-end kind of like
consumer CPUs to go for and that three hundred and thirty dollar range I would
say definitely go for a 3700 X if you want to save some money actually you can
save a lot of money go for a 3600 you'll be pretty happy with gaming as well
Rison just gives you all kinds of really good performance and have a lot more
cores and you're getting out of Intel for multi-threaded performance if you're
squeamish and you do like Intel because I only trust Intel whatever then you
know 97 2k moves you up to 360 and you got to buy the cooler but good choices
still if you're gonna do Intel clearly the better value and performance better
performance because sometimes people hear better value dang oh there's a
compromising performance you're not there's no compromise in AMD with
I'm gonna say generally so I would say rising first but if you like him till 97
okay but generally 2600 K you don't have to move if you've only got five hundred
dollars to do an upgrade and you've got like a nine Series card I would disagree
with any of you to say buy a CPU and stick with that nine series GPU I would
say go to something brand-new or maybe search to an SSD if you can
well if you don't if you don't have an ST yup SSD was is a I think a better
option it but you do have to I'm saying this 26 inch okay is a great part but
it's PCIe to the usb sucks there's no nvme to m dot to slot on that
you're not gonna be able to do that easily you're not gonna be able to boot
to it there's just so many things that are holding that platform back it's
basically it's basically a Honda Civic with three hundred and fifty thousand
miles on it right yeah right so if you want upgrade it's gonna you go to a
brand new system with a grandma it'll it'll feel awesome but you know that's
there's some compromise you're gonna get with that and the other really big issue
that you might want to go oh it's time to dump this is well if you bought a
Dell or an HP or Lenovo you've probably got a lot of security updates to support
all the Spectre meltdown stuff yep a lot of these board members are like hey good
luck you should have bought just go out and buy something new if you do we're
all here to support skylake and on a lot of them we're dumping you overboard
you got as well you're going overboard saying bridge definitely going overboard
so your if you are afraid of a security threats from those there are you know it
doesn't look like anybody's using it but you're just sort of a scaredy-cat about
security then it might be a good idea to move on to a new CPU okay I love hearing
your take on this and I want to hear your take on it a chime in the comments
below and like I said if you have questions email them to the full nerd at
PC world comm if we don't answer them on the stream we might take some of them
and answer them here and in this kind of format so thanks for taking the time and
answer questions Gordon thank you