AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core Processor (8 CPUs), ~4.0GHz
AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core Processor (8 CPUs), ~4.0GHz
You can load them. The question is what kind of performance will you get. Certainly better than you are getting now.
I would recommend you google your CPU along with an ENB you are looking at. See what kind of performance others are getting with some GPU combos.
For instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCop4WRUR4c
He's using K ENB which is one of the most intensive ENBS out there. He also has ugrids set to 7 and is using 2k-4k textures. Average 30 FPS.
Which is great considering the former. He's using a geforce 970 4GB card. Those run ~$300+
What kind of budget are you looking at?
Skyrim is less about how many cores you have. It doesnt scale well beyond 2 cores. AMDs run SKyrim fine. It's when you add mods to the picture as you have already. Intels tend to do better.
Yes, that's true. A intel processor is way faster on Skyrim as an AMD processor.
And there is a catch. The better the GPU the higher the differences. !!!
A i5-3570 vs FX-8350 with an GTX 680:
i5 MIN: 87.7 fps
i5 MAX: 112.2 fpd
FX-8350 MIN: 67.4 fps
FX-8350 MAX: 86.2 fps
A i5-3570 vs FX-8350 with an GTX 690:
i5 MIN: 94.0 fps
i5 MAX: 145.0 fps
FX-8350 MIN: 50.0 fps
FX-8350 MAX: 103.0 fps
Those are labor test benchmarks, so nothing is exactly the same with different hardware configurations, however the differences are quite high, as u can see.
Also the lower the GPU, the lower the differences. !!!
So, as it is right now, i don't thing there would be much difference, if you had an i5 instead of the FX-8350 CPU.
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A better GPU would raise you frame-rates for sure. But you will lose a decent amount of fps, in contrast with an Intel processor.
In other games the difference would be much smaller, but in Skyrim an Intel processor is the way to go.
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My advice: Keep your processor for the time been, and invest on a fast GPU. !!! (the faster the better, depending on your budget of course.)