SSD or i5 processor

st999

I have a GA-H61M-S2PV motherboard with an Intel G530 2.40 GHz processor.

What would be the best upgrade for faster gaming, an i5 processor or an SSD?

Tropez

What do you mean by faster gaming? Faster loading times or better performance (higher FPS) in games?

SSD will boost overall system speed and loading times assuming the operating system is on it. For gaming, it will improve level loading times but will have no overall effect on things such as frame rates.

CPU has some effect on game performance, such as frame rates, but often poor performance in games is caused by a GPU that cannot handle the requirements of the game at the settings chosen (although in some RTS games, CPU performance is very important due to AI calculations). That said, depending on what graphics card you have, the Celeron processor you have might be causing a bottleneck and an i5 would be a fairly large upgrade on a Celeron for the most part.

poppellerant

The SSD will give the bigger improvement in terms of load times. But games tend to command a decent processor, so I think an i5 would be in your best interests.

shortchanged_2

What graphics card do you currently have installed?