Need help with upgrading PC to make Apex run well

[humblepups]

My PC is not the greatest, I'm operating on a combination of gear leftover from very old builds and new bits that I've been able to shell out for here and there. But it's still powerful enough for most games I play.

Apex however, has been a nightmare since day one. I've been playing apex since launch solidly, and it's the most inconsistently performing game I've ever played.

All I want is to AT LEAST maintain a stable 60fps. I'm not looking for fps in the hundreds, a higher refresh rate monitor is on my shopping list but it's not a priority right now.

I can say that it's pretty barrable most of the time, and just walking around looting I can get like 80 - 110 average. But some tense battles with copious Bang smoke and Caustic farts, result in 20 fps, massive frame drops and adaptive resolution turning the game into abstract expressionism.

All of my settings are on low of course, drivers updated, and benchmarks say all my hardware is performing as to be expected so I need to know what I should upgrade.

I know that my CPU is the weak link here but obviously I'm stuck on AM3+ with my current motherboard. I recently made a very very minor upgrade from an AMD FX-6100 to a FX-4350 (3.3ghz to 4.2ghz), which gives me about a 10 higher average fps but I find that the game tanks while I have a discord call active...

So would upgrading to an AM4 board and a Ryzen CPU make a huge difference?

I've really not got a huge budget for upgrades, I've got student loan debt out the arse, but I'm desperate for a stable fps while I'm trying to improve at this game.

My specs:

GPU= Nvidia GTX 970 4GB

CPU= FX-4350 4.2GHz

RAM= 8GB DDR3

HD= SSD 240GB

Motherboard= ASUS M5A78L-M

I really need some recommendations for what would give me a decent enough boost in performance so that 60 FPS consistently isn't just a dream.

I'll mention as well that my partner just started playing a few months ago and she just upgraded to an RX 570 and an SSD but again, she's got all the same issues as me.

Her specs:

CPU= FX-8120 3.1GHz

GPU= AMD Radeon RX-570

RAM= 16GB DDR3

HD= SSD 240GB

Motherboard= ASUS M5A78L-M

[EA_Kent]

Hey @humblepups. 

While I can't really make any specific hardware recommendations, I can say that the FX-4350 is the minimum required CPU (for AMD at least) to run Apex Legends. If you do upgrade to a new CPU you might see a performance increase. It's possible the CPU is a bottleneck, so even upgrading to a better video card might only show a minor performance boost. I don't have access to these particular parts myself, so I'm afraid I haven't really messed around with this hardware setup on my own to see. 

Also I did want to point out one other thing. Like you mentioned, upgrading to a Ryzen CPU would require an AM4 motherboard as well. However, you would also need to get new RAM, since Ryzen CPUs are designed to work with DDR4 memory and are not compatible with DDR3. For my own PC I decided to upgrade to a Ryzen 5 from an old Sandy Bridge Intel CPU about 2 years ago, and it basically became a new PC build. 

/Kent