What is my bottleneck? Advice?

[Chase]

Hey guys,

Some intensive games such as ArmA 3 run fine (max 40 fps tho ) ..but then when more stuff in the game happens such as a big battle with explosions and such - the fps drops to as much as 15 fps.

I do not think my video card is the bottleneck. It's not that old. EVGA GTX 560 Ti 1GB. I can run the game fine on high settings, it's just when big things happen.

I have plenty RAM.. 8GB of it. I am starting to think that my AMD quad core is the bottleneck. It's an AMD Phenom II X4 955.

Full specs:

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Operating System
Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit
CPU
AMD Phenom II X4 955
Deneb 45nm Technology
RAM
8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 669MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK Computer INC. M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 (AM3)
Graphics
1023MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 (EVGA)
Hard Drives
932GB Western Digital WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1 ATA Device (SATA)

I am thinking about buying a CORE i5-4670K 3.4GHz with an ASUS Z87-A LGA 1150 ATX Motherboard IF the CPU is indeed my bottleneck.

The reason I am asking here is to get more confirmation that my CPU is my bottleneck before I spend money.

Advice please.

Thanks.

[Devin]

The graphics card isn't what I would call strong, but it's more than enough to run ARMA and games around that level without a problem.
I would say it's more than likely the fact that the CPU is rather outdated, still an old quad core AMD design.

[Matt Murdock]

The game is the issue -_-

Arma, DayZ and alike titles by Bethesda run fuckin crappy on NVIDIA cards.

I couldn't get more than 19 FPS even at lowest in ArmaF2P on my i7, 8GB RAM and GT650. -_-

[Batta]

GT650. -_-

That's your problem indeed 

[ElMartu]

theres no bottle neck, every computer part is already dated. condolences. you might do better if you get the new intel mobo/cpu but your GPU isn't that good either

[Fuzzy]

ASUS Z87-A

Don't. The power delivery is shit. Get a Gigabyte Z87X-D3H instead, much better power delivery. And if you ask me, much better looking aswell. While ASUS says there is 8 power phases, in truth it only has 4. The Gigabyte truthfully has 8.

[Matt Murdock]

That's your problem indeed 

Naah, ARMA is just unoptimized for NVIDIA cards.

Click my signature, I run all those game at highest settings and still get 30+ FPS always. xD