Ladies and gentlemen of the humble OC CPU forum!

I've been the proud owner of an i5 3570k for the past 3-4 years now and it's still holding up very well.

I was just wondering, is it time for me to seek an upgrade? All I really do on my PC is game heavily so something leaning more towards that side of things would be great (if required at all)

Current specs:

i5 3570k
GTX 980
Z77 Extreme mobo (I think...)
8GB DDR3 Ram

Think that's everything of any major importance... let me know if you want more!

Thanks in advance

Is it holding you back?

A couple of the more CPU intensive games seem to wrestle with it a touch from time to time which can be a little irritating.

DrToffnar said:

A couple of the more CPU intensive games seem to wrestle with it a touch from time to time which can be a little irritating.

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The more CPU intensive games perform better with more cores. You could always pick up a second hand 3770k and sell that one. You'd solve a minor annoyance and it would be a cheap upgrade. However, 8GB will become a bottleneck in the not to distant future, if it isn't already holding you back now. You could take it as a reason to just upgrade the whole lot.

My 4670k died a few months back. I couldn't justify replacing it so I just went full upgrade. I now have 6700k, 32GB DDR4 and a Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha. I have definitely noticed a difference in games, however, a lot of that will be due to having hyperthreading on the i7. My point is, if pennies are tight and it's really bothering you, go for second hand 3700k. If you have disposable income and a laissez faire attitude, go full upgrade!

Is it overclocked?

My 3570k runs at 4.6 24/7 and not really felt it held me back, much.

I find my GPU, also have a 980, is now the limiting factor. However my monitor is only 60hz so doesnt matter too much yet.

No. A modest overclock and a GPU upgrade (1070, 1080) would be better.

I found my 4.5Ghz 3570K was holding my GTX 1080 back at times - mainly busy cities in Witcher 3 and BF4/1 64 player servers. It would hit 100% usages on all cores and I would get noticeable stuttering on my 100Hz monitor. However it was never holding it back to the point I was getting less than 60FPS at 1440p.

I upgraded to a 2600K because I sourced one dirt cheap and it has definitely helped with the stuttering. I have never seen it hit 100% usage since and min FPS has improved with the modern titles I am playing. However with older games there is a chance it will be slightly worse than the 3570K due to lower single thread performance - but performance in those games is probably going to be so good that it won't matter.

I'd just keep it for the time being, I've been playing BF1 1440p and never go below 50 fps, and normally I'll sit at 80-90 quite easily. I do believe within the next 2 years it'll need to go but hope either Kaby or Coffee can give me something worth upgrading to.

Do you have an SSD? Get one. Also go up to 16GB of RAM. Your machine will last awhile yet.

When you feel like the 980 is chugging you still have room for a GPU upgrade without upgrading the CPU.

You should overclock if you haven't already.

Cheers for the response guys!

I think imma just wait it out until something eventually packs in. My set up in general is getting on a bit now, the 980 being the newest bit of kit in there. It's all housed in a NZXT Phantom case that in and of itself is about 4 years old...

After thinking on it over the weekend I think I'd do better just to save some cash over the coming months and just get an entirely new set up. Tis a little troubling that my 980 is already slightly outdated though :/

In general I used to say a GPU has 2 years grade a performance and a CPU 4 years grade a.

But actually I have a 3570k paired with a 970 and at 1200p there still installed a lot it can't do.

A few games I turn few settings down from 100% ultra but other than that it's fine.

OC the CPU to 4.4ghz, 16GB of ram and your be good for at least another year.

But it depends on resolution. If your at anything over 1200p you could still do as above and upgrade to a 1070.

Or wait it out and do a full system upgrade as you indicated above.

DrToffnar said:

After thinking on it over the weekend I think I'd do better just to save some cash over the coming months and just get an entirely new set up

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This is the best idea. The 7xxx series CPUs from Intel, and AMDs Zen CPUs, are reported to be out at the start of next year.

If the 8 thread 7700k is above your budget, there will no doubt be a few on here upgrading to it from Skylake cpus, so you could grab a 2nd hand 6700k for a decent price.

A 6700k will be slightly slower than a 7700k no doubt, but having 8 threads will last you better in the long run than just having the 4 available in a 6600k / 7600k.

Or if Zen, with its 8 cores / 16 threads performs similar to a 6700k & its price is decent, then that's another option to consider.