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AMD CPU for WQHD gaming?

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18 Mar 2020
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158
Location
Ireland
I'm planning to upgrade from my Ryzen 1600. I am currently running a 34 UW 3440x1440 monitor for gaming on my 2070 (which I also plan to upgrade in the future)

I was originally aiming to grab a 5600x until I saw reviews that at 1440p the difference to a much cheaper Ryzen (like the 3600) is minimal.

Should I keep looking for the 5600X as being more future proof? Or stick with the 3600 that is 2/3 of the price for a similar performance? Or is there any other CPU that I should be considering?

If it helps for decisions: I don't play shooters so I'm normally aiming towards gfx quality more than fps. I do intend on playing CP2077 eventually when I upgrade the 2070.
 
As long as you get a decent B550 motherboard it doesn't matter right now.

If the benchmarks for the games you're playing show the 3600 giving sufficient performance then why spend more? I would say the 5600X's vastly superior single-thread performance would give you a bit of wiggle room in a wider spectrum of games, but truth be told with a decent B550 board you have the option of going all the way to 5950X if/when you feel the need to move past the 3600.

Games are becoming more threaded as time goes on, so perhaps in a year or two the 5950X might become a bargain upgrade and breathe some new life into your system without having to replace everything.
 
As long as you get a decent B550 motherboard it doesn't matter right now.

If the benchmarks for the games you're playing show the 3600 giving sufficient performance then why spend more? I would say the 5600X's vastly superior single-thread performance would give you a bit of wiggle room in a wider spectrum of games, but truth be told with a decent B550 board you have the option of going all the way to 5950X if/when you feel the need to move past the 3600.

Games are becoming more threaded as time goes on, so perhaps in a year or two the 5950X might become a bargain upgrade and breathe some new life into your system without having to replace everything.

Thanks, that sounds like a great suggestion! :) Time to head over to the Motherboard forum to check for B550 recommendations? :D
 
It's worth having a look at X570 too, but I'm not sure you'd get the most out of the extra features. But it's always worth a price comparison.
 
Id go with a 3600 at that resolution as spending anymore won't make a difference, also you can upgrade without changing the board which is another bonus as stuff like PCIe gen 4.0 make no difference yet for gaming and by the time they do the current CPUs will be the bottleneck.
 
I have the same resolution and saw nice gains from a 1600 to a 3600x (went for x as I could get it for 140 at the time).
 
I have the same resolution and saw nice gains from a 1600 to a 3600x (went for x as I could get it for 140 at the time).

I've considered the X but I wanted to stick to 65W CPUs . Maybe I'm wrong but in my head 65W vs 105W represent an energy saving and less heating?
 
I've considered the X but I wanted to stick to 65W CPUs . Maybe I'm wrong but in my head 65W vs 105W represent an energy saving and less heating?

IIRC it's 95W, so not quite as bad as 105W. But tbh it's never under too much load all of the time so it's take a couple of years to make the saving back on power considering the saving I got the X for.

Had I bought RRP I'd have gone for the 3600
 
I've considered the X but I wanted to stick to 65W CPUs . Maybe I'm wrong but in my head 65W vs 105W represent an energy saving and less heating?
The 3600X is a 95w CPU but in gaming workloads the difference between that and a 3600 in power consumption would be negligible, that said I'd still go for the 3600 as it's cheaper and won't make any difference to fps over the X at 1440P UW.
 
Nice to know! What about in heat generation / needs for cooling, is there any difference between 65W and higher?

Shame one can't get a 3600 or 3600X for 140 nowadays :D
 
Used CPUs? Is that really a thing and is there a market for it? I'd imagine with all the possibilities of damaged pins, etc it would be quite a gamble

Depends where you buy. I have had a 2700X, 2600, 1600, 3570K all from the members market here and all still going strong.

Unfortunately doesn't look like you qualify yet. :p
 
It's worth noting that, whilst up until the last generation of GPU's gaming at 1440p was mostly GPU bound and therefore upgrading your CPU wouldn't have provided significantly more frames, the increased grunt of the 3080 / 6800 XT and above means that the GPU bound resolution has shifted to 4K. So when paired with one of the top new GPUs, you will see significant performance gains gaming at 1440p with a better CPU for most games even at ultra wide. A card killing like game like Cyberpunk is an exception to this but these types of games don't come around very often.
 
It's worth noting that, whilst up until the last generation of GPU's gaming at 1440p was mostly GPU bound and therefore upgrading your CPU wouldn't have provided significantly more frames, the increased grunt of the 3080 / 6800 XT and above means that the GPU bound resolution has shifted to 4K. So when paired with one of the top new GPUs, you will see significant performance gains gaming at 1440p with a better CPU for most games even at ultra wide. A card killing like game like Cyberpunk is an exception to this but these types of games don't come around very often.
I found only a small difference in a few games with most having no difference at all going from a 3600 to a 5800X with an RTX3080 @2560x1440p so would expect UW to be even less. Also games like cyberpunk, AC Valhalla and watchdogs legion which are the newer release games are all GPU bound so moving forward most of the new games this year will be in the same catagory, the games which are CPU bound are generally the older titles like CSGO And Apex legends for example but these already run well over 200 fps so it makes no difference which CPU you use unless you have a 240/360hz monitor.
 
I was just about to make a thread asking the same about going from a 1600 to 3600 at 1440p, now to find the best deal posted to Ireland
 
I was just about to make a thread asking the same about going from a 1600 to 3600 at 1440p, now to find the best deal posted to Ireland

Yup, from what I've seen, the DE version of a certain web shop that has the name of a forest seems to be the better place, I can order multiple things (CPU, board, memory, etc) and just pay around a tenner shipping for all to Ireland.
 
Yup, from what I've seen, the DE version of a certain web shop that has the name of a forest seems to be the better place, I can order multiple things (CPU, board, memory, etc) and just pay around a tenner shipping for all to Ireland.

Yeah thats also where I've seen it cheapest
 
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