B450 maximal upgrade path

[Vexr]

I have an MSI B450-A PRO, a Ryzen 2700 @ stock, and an RX 5700 XT running a 100 Hz UWQHD Freesync monitor (3440x1440). I have a 750W PSU (getting rather old now).

I'm wondering about upgrading this system to its absolute max (gaming wise).

From what I've seen, looks like I could get near double the CPU performance in games from upgrading to a high end Ryzen 5000 series from my 2700, thanks to AMD recently agreeing to support those on B450 mobos.

Is PCI-E 3.0 x16 going to be a problem? I've seen talk that PCI-E 2.0 x16 isn't much of an issue for even a 3090, which suggests to me that the PCI-E limitations of my B450 motherboard will be negligible for a good generation or two of graphics cards to come.

My understanding of the current situation has me leaning toward upgrading to a 5800X or 5900X as soon as those processors reach decent availability / value, especially as they'll be the last CPU upgrade I can get on a B450.

Graphics cards wise, I would like to see my next big GPU upgrade include ray tracing at ~High settings on Triple A titles at 75-100 fps at 3440x1440 - including Cyberpunk 2077, which it already looks like the current RTX 3080-3090 graphics cards are struggling with. I don't mind DLSS 2.0 @ Quality going by what I've seen, but seems those cards may still have trouble hitting the resolution/frame rate I want to play at with ray tracing on.

As I can just about scrape by on my RX 5700 XT @ 3440x1440, I'm wondering about skipping this generation of graphics cards and waiting for a matured ray tracing line up that's only just beginning to show signs of being handicapped by PCI-E 3.0 x16. I remember a similar dilemma when I bought one of the last made high performance AGP graphics cards a long time ago, but don't recall regretting it.

Look forward to hearing from anyone else considering the B450 upgrade path. Am hoping to get a 'premium' gaming experience sooner rather than later on this platform.

 

[Joxeon]

You will gain far more FPS with a GPU upgrade rather than CPU at the resolution you game at, I went from a 3600 > 5800X and at 2560x1440 I saw gains from 5~15% depending on the game. Going from a GTX 1070ti > RTX 3080 I gained 100~120%

I can confirm though that upgrading to a 5000 series CPU on my B450 tomahawk max was a smooth no hassle process and this latest MSI beta bios includes all the goodies like PBO 2 + curve optimizer etc.

 

[VonScar]

"Is PCI-E 3.0 x16 going to be a problem? I've seen talk that PCI-E 2.0 x16 isn't much of an issue for even a 3090, which suggests to me that the PCI-E limitations of my B450 motherboard will be negligible for a good generation or two of graphics cards to come."

From what I have read, PCI-E X 16 has still not been saturated by graphics cards, so causes little or no bottleneck with any card including the RTX 3090.

What may bottleneck is the use of an NME M2 storage drive with PCI-E 4. You won't be able to take advantage of the speeds that offers.

 

[Vexr]

What may bottleneck is the use of an NME M2 storage drive with PCI-E 4. You won't be able to take advantage of the speeds that offers.

Is it only storage drives on PCI-E 4 slots that sap PCI-E resources? I do have a Kingston A2000 1TB NVME "PCI-E" SSD in the mobos dedicated M.2. slot. Adding this drive disabled two SATA ports on my mobo, so wondering if it's pulling resources from somewhere other than PCI-E.

 

[mickyflinn]

Is it only storage drives on PCI-E 4 slots that sap PCI-E resources? I do have a Kingston A2000 1TB NVME "PCI-E" SSD in the mobos dedicated M.2. slot. Adding this drive disabled two SATA ports on my mobo, so wondering if it's pulling resources from somewhere other than PCI-E.

Nah disabling the sata ports will let the m2 run at pcie3 speed so basically your swaping

 

[Vexr]

Good to know Don't think I'll be upgrading my storage any further (also have a 500 GB 2.5" SATA SSD and a 4TB standard HDD for junk / large files / ancient games) so don't see any further impingement on the PCI-E bus happening from that direction.

You will gain far more FPS with a GPU upgrade rather than CPU at the resolution you game at, I went from a 3600 > 5800X and at 2560x1440 I saw gains from 5~15% depending on the game. Going from a GTX 1070ti > RTX 3080 I gained 100~120%

I can confirm though that upgrading to a 5000 series CPU on my B450 tomahawk max was a smooth no hassle process and this latest MSI beta bios includes all the goodies like PBO 2 + curve optimizer etc.

Nice to know the MSI BIOS will retain some decent functionality.

Cyberpunk 2077 is the first title that's seen me question my CPU. I've had to turn down crowd density to medium to mitigate the effect, but am definitely CPU bound in some areas @ sub-60 fps (or even sub-50 fps). The CPU utilization fix for that game that wasn't taken up by the developers for 8 core+ CPUs just sent my utilization through the roof without an increase in performance in CPU bound areas.

There's of course the games that are junk optimisation wise - I think Assassins Creed Odyssey is the latest I've personally owned. I really learned how bad some games' optimisation is when I upgraded from a GTX 970 + FX 8350 to a 1070 Ti + Ryzen 2700, and saw almost identical (poor) performance in Dishonored 2 between my new system and old. Reminds me that some games are just beyond hope and should not be taken as an indication that you need to upgrade.