AM4 or AM5

nheather

nheather

nheather

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Joined
19 May 2004
Posts
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Location
Horsham, West Sussex
Hi,

Contemplating an upgrade, but I want to keep the budget reasonably low.

My current setup is

AMD Ryzen 3600X
16GB (2 x 8) 3000 DDR4
GTX 1660Ti

I play 1080P games at the moment and Afterburner tells me that I am GPU limited, the GPU runs at 100% whereas the CPU typically sits at 35%.

There is a new GPU on its way to me, a 9060XT 16GB and my first evaluation is to see what the utilisation is, but expecting the limitation to switch from the GPU to the CPU, in which case I may look to upgrade.

I have two options:

  • Stay on AM4 - I could put in a 5xxx CPU, maybe a 5700X, which would be a relatively cheap easy fix
  • Move to AM5 - that would mean a new motherboard, a new CPU (such as a 7600X), and new DDR5 RAM (maybe 32GB this time) - obviously this is a more expensive route though I maybe able to offset by selling my AM4 stuff (assuming that there is a market for it.
Note sure whether I will need a new cooler too, I'm currently running an AMD Wraith Max, not sure if that would be enough for a 5700X or a 7600X.

Obviously, the AM5 route will be more expensive, but I assume there would be advantages (other than some future proofing). What sort of benefits will I see on AM5, is there much of a performance improvement?
 
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VaderDSL said:
You could grab a 5700X3D from OcUK for £199, granted not the most cost effective, but it could probably take you well into when AM6 stuff gets released?
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Yes, that would definitely be an option I would have in mind.

mickyflinn said:
Just upgrade the GPU first and see if gives you what you need .
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Yes, I definitely intend to do that.
 
Doing some virtual shopping I could have one of these

Price = £200
B450 Motherboard
5700x3D
16GB DDR4 3000
RX9060XT 16GB
NVME 4th Gen but restricted to 3rd Gen speeds

Price = £370 (minus whatever I could sell my 3600X bits for)
B650 Motherboard
7600X
32GB DDR5 6000
RX9060XT 16GB
NVME 4th Gen running at 4th Gen speeds

I'm not sure whether my 450 motherboard, 3600X and 16GB DDR would have any value second hand - is anyone buying this sort of thing?

But I've no idea if the AM5 build would perform better than the AM4 build, I assume it would, but would it be a stark or slim improvement?
 
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nheather said:
But I've no idea if the AM5 build would perform better than the AM4 build, I assume it would, but would it be a stark or slim improvement?
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Let's put it this way. If you had a 5700X3D, 'upgrading' to a 7600/7600X would be pointless.

nheather said:
I'm not sure whether my 450 motherboard, 3600X and 16GB DDR would have any value second hand - is anyone buying this sort of thing?
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Yeah, would still be a great bundle for someone on an old PC, or e.g. wanting a cheap gaming PC for the kid(s).

Note that DDR4 (at least, new) has gone up in price a lot lately, which makes the 7600X with 32GB of DDR5 (especially with current deals) more attractive if you were hoping to upgrade the RAM too.
 
Yes from what I have seen of games comparisons, the 5700X3D and the 7600X are very similar.

But the AM5 would have 32GB of RAM compared with 16GB on the AM4. And the AM5 would have PCI-E 4.0 which would allow my NVME drive to run at full speed (double the transfer rate of PCI-E 3.0 on the AM4).
 
nheather said:
But the AM5 would have 32GB of RAM compared with 16GB on the AM4. And the AM5 would have PCI-E 4.0 which would allow my NVME drive to run at full speed (double the transfer rate of PCI-E 3.0 on the AM4).
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It would depend on the games you're playing, but generally speaking: those two things aren't an issue, since if you were running out of memory you'd probably notice already (e.g. with stuttery gameplay) and once you have a SSD, storage is hardly ever a bottleneck for games.
 
Don't know if you read my thread in graphics card sub forum but I've just built a pc using the AM4 platform. At moment it's a Gigabyte Aourus elite/ 5600X / Sapphire Pulse 9070XT / crucial Ballistix ddr4 16gig pc3200mhz. And it's so good my main pc which has a 4090 and 7800X3D in is not being used. I've also got a 5800X3D and 32gig PC 3600hz ram coming. So I say there's plenty of life left in AM4 yet. It's worth sticking with until AM6 either is worth upgrading too or makes AM5 even cheaper path.
 
Hi,

I now have my 9060XT installed really liking it, tried it on a few games and able to turn graphics up to the highest level - in every case the FPS is limited to 60 FPS which is all my old monitor can handle.

My CPU is not stressed though, running at no more than 50%.

So at the moment, I am not CPU or GPU limited, I am monitor limited.

So the AM4 or AM5 dilemma is on hold for a while.
 
Jimbo said:
Don't know if you read my thread in graphics card sub forum but I've just built a pc using the AM4 platform. At moment it's a Gigabyte Aourus elite/ 5600X / Sapphire Pulse 9070XT / crucial Ballistix ddr4 16gig pc3200mhz. And it's so good my main pc which has a 4090 and 7800X3D in is not being used. I've also got a 5800X3D and 32gig PC 3600hz ram coming. So I say there's plenty of life left in AM4 yet. It's worth sticking with until AM6 either is worth upgrading too or makes AM5 even cheaper path.
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THIS! Such as wicked platform!
 
nheather said:
I'm not sure whether my 450 motherboard, 3600X and 16GB DDR would have any value second hand - is anyone buying this sort of thing?
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Hi I recently upgraded to the 5700x3d and sold a 3600 on ebay for £48. With the 3600x the average price is about £55+ so I would set a minimum value for that.

I don't know much about the infinity fabric speed vs performance but I have 3200mhz ram which actually bsods at that speed so I run it at 3000mhz and feel like I'm missing out on performance. In regards to games I think having ram at lesser than what is considered the sweetspot of 3600Mhz on Am4 would cause less game frames and effect the 1% lows a lot
 
You know 3600mhz ram on AM4 using 3000 or 5000 series Ryzen is considered over clocking. For instance my 5600X is designed to work with 3200mhz ram. I recently bought some 3600mhz of the auction site and my motherboard doesn't like running it at XMP so to get it stable I've got to downclock it too 3200mhz. Not to say 3600mhz won't work because it did on my old AM4 platform.
 
Jimbo said:
You know 3600mhz ram on AM4 using 3000 or 5000 series Ryzen is considered over clocking. For instance my 5600X is designed to work with 3200mhz ram. I recently bought some 3600mhz of the auction site and my motherboard doesn't like running it at XMP so to get it stable I've got to downclock it too 3200mhz. Not to say 3600mhz won't work because it did on my old AM4 platform.
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For AMD you want to be using EXPO ram, XMP is for Intel systems.
 
Jimbo said:
True but my Gigabyte Aourus elite X570 bios labels it XMP profile.
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might be the ram only has xmp profiles on it...amd can run xmp profiles so not an issue..is the bios up to date on the aourus elite mobo..might be why you struggle running 3600hz speed...my am4 with a 5800x runs 3600 no problem...
a bit like when am5 came out, runningat 6000 speed was problematic...3 yrs later and 6000 now the standard you buy and some boards can run at 8200 speed, and b650 boards can run them too with bios updates wich patch the memory controller software
 
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