AMD4 upgrade

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My daughter has a gigabyte b450m with a R71700 RX580 graphics card and would like to improve performance. Would it be better to buy a new MB cpu and card or put a better cpu in the old MB along with a new card. We have about £500
 
For £500 you're not going to get a new platform + GPU so I'd suggest an upgrade to your existing rig. I'm going to assume your PSU and RAM don't need upgraded but let us know what they are to confirm if that's true or not.

Check your motherboard supports the 5000 series CPUs (get your BIOS updated) and pick up a 5600/5600X or 5700X3D, the latter gives the best gaming performance but is more expensive, the 5600 is still waaay faster than her existing CPU.

That leaves you with £300-£400 for a GPU. Obviously AMDs new cards are due any day now and although you likely won't be getting one of them for that budget it might be worth holding out to see what happens to the market (?!)
Personally if your PSU is good enough I'd try to find a 7700XT/7800XT if you can, as a minimum something like a 6700XT/6750XT will fit that budget and have great performance. You also have the option of the Intel B580 but with a lower end CPU it can struggle and it's about as fast as the 6750XT anyway.
 
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Thanks for that it is a great help. I might go for a used nvidia 2070 or 3060. I have a spare corsair 750watt psu so that is sorted. She has 16gig 1500 so that might need swapping.ddr4
 
what @Rob_B said basically :)

for £500 this would be what my upgrade path would look like, if buying used parts:
cpu: 5600 (non-x)
ram: 32gb ddr4 3200
gpu: 3060ti
ssd: 1tb nvme
 
Would it be better to buy a new MB cpu and card or put a better cpu in the old MB along with a new card.

As @Rob_B has said, that's too little for a platform upgrade.

Update the BIOS (do this before anything else), put in a Ryzen 5700X3D, and spend the remainder on a graphics card. You should be able to get a Geforce RTX 4060, Arc B580, or Radeon RX 7600.

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £1,011.96 (includes delivery: £7.99)​

Edit: actually, don't buy that Zotac 4060 - it's a single fan design so will be noisier. There are dual fan cards which cost a little more.
 
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Thanks for that it is a great help. I might go for a used nvidia 2070 or 3060. I have a spare corsair 750watt psu so that is sorted. She has 16gig 1500 so that might need swapping.ddr4
I picked up a 2nd hand 7800xt not so long ago £350ish...that's just ahead of a 3080 relative performace(twice the power of a 3060), and has 16gb vram...a new card you can get on OCuk for £450(and diff models elsewhere), and you should be able to pick up a 2nd hand 5600x for £50, but if you go 2nd hand gpu, can stretch to a 5700x3d 2nd hand if you can find one (maybe)

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £449.99 (includes delivery: £0.00)​
 
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True, I guess then the combination of a faster CPU with the 3D cache might make it more worth it. Just the 3D versions are quite a lot more expensive!
yeah true, even that shop in china has hiked the prices :(
i managed to nab a new 5700x3d 3 months ago for £125 delivered!
 
£499 RX 9070? (Maybe)
£120 Ryzen 5700X3D, or £65 R5 5600.

Sell the left over parts for £60, I am being optimistic about the GPU price but it is possible, and would easily drop into a much better platform.
 
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