Cost effective upgrade

[art43]

I'd be grateful for some advice for the most cost effective upgrade for my desktop. It's several years since my last, up to this point I've played games pretty well enough for my purposes ( the likes of various Fallouts, Dishonoreds, Bioshocks, GTA V amongst others to give you some idea). I now fancy moving on to the likes of Outer Worlds and Red Dead Redemption 2 and although my system meets minimum specs for these I feel it's about time for an upgrade. Question is would simply changing up the graphics card be sufficient (and to what level) or should I be thinking of my cpu as well? I obviously don't want to be bottlenecked but I'm not sufficiently tech savvie to judge this. My system specs follow (taken using Speccy) any advice will be appreciated.

Operating System Windows 10 Home 64-bit

CPU Intel Core i5 2500K @ 3.30GHz 27 °C
Sandy Bridge 32nm Technology

RAM 8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 802MHz (9-9-9-24)

Motherboard ASUSTeK Computer INC. P8Z68-V LX (LGA1155) 23 °C

Graphics 2369M (1920x1080@60Hz)
4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 (MSI) 34 °C

Storage 931GB TOSHIBA HDWD110 (SATA) 31 °C
233GB Maxtor 6Y250M0 (SATA) 24 °C

 

[StarShock]

Normally I would just suggest a new GPU, but the 970 is still competitive with things like the RX 590 or 1650 super which is where I'd usually point someone. If you're going to go for a higher tier graphics card, 1660 ti, 2060 or 5600xt and above you're going to run into a CPU bottleneck in some more CPU demanding games. Red dead 2 is an example of this where on a quad core you would likely see a fairly large performance drop compared to something with more cores and threads.

So it may be worth looking at something like a ryzen 3600

 

[EsaT]

That 9 years old CPU is certainly bottleneck in newer more demanding games.
And any background tasks demanding CPU time are going to cause instant fps drops.
With extra threads 2600K would fare some amount better, but that 4c/4t just can't handle demanding games and background tasks.

Also 8GB is too little for heavier games in Wintoys10.
But neither there's sense to upgrade memory...
Unless getting extra memory for pocket money you would use for candy, because DDR3 can't be reused with better CPU.

 

[faceman123]

3770k and 8gb ram with SSD - you're welcome

 

[art43]

Thanks for your replies, I suspected my cpu would bottleneck any improvements. How would an i7 9700k with something like an rtx 2060 super work? (That's providing my motherboard supports it) Or would that be overkill ?

 

[Kurgen]

Motherboard doesn't support u need new mobo new ram and cpu, and ryzen ia better choice at mo. SSD IS ESSENTIAL

 

[Marine-RX179]

Thanks for your replies, I suspected my cpu would bottleneck any improvements. How would an i7 9700k with something like an rtx 2060 super work? Or would that be overkill ?

I'm afraid Intel is not really the go to platform anymore (at least for now), with them lagging behind in he race of features, efficiency and even IPC, along with their vulnerabilities.

If you are going to rebuild a system, AMD Ryzen 3000 series is the way to go; just go for a decent B450 motherboard like the MSI HAWK Max for around £100, and then grab yourself either a Ryzen 3600 (6 cores 12 threads) for around £150 or Ryzen 3700X (8 cores 16 threads) for around £260~£270 depending on your budget, and 2x8GB of DDR4 3200/3600MHz rams.

 

[Darkpassenger]

Get rid of the mb ram and cpu start fresh gpu is still fine

 

[art43]

Ok, it's getting clearer thanks. New motherboard/cpu/memory as suggested is one option and obviously the best for futureproofing purposes. If I don't fancy replacing the motherboard at the moment and go for something more short-term my existing asus will take an i7 3770k according to their compatibility finder, would I see enough improvement with this and how far could I then upgrade the graphics card...to 2060ish levels??

 

[faceman123]

Ok, it's getting clearer thanks. New motherboard/cpu/memory as suggested is one option and obviously the best for futureproofing purposes. If I don't fancy replacing the motherboard at the moment and go for something more short-term my existing asus will take an i7 3770k according to their compatibility finder, would I see enough improvement with this and how far could I then upgrade the graphics card...to 2060ish levels??

a ryzen 3600 + b450 tomahawk you're golden for another 6+ years especially as you can pop in a 16 core at any moment after selling your current kit it would cost you around £120~ for Much better performance and enable new features like nvme etc etc BUT for price you cant beat a 3770k IF You can get it for £30~ any more its pointless and id sell and get the 3600 + b450