CPU and motherboard upgrade

gooche23

gooche23

gooche23

Associate
Joined
14 Jan 2024
Posts
5
Location
edinburgh
Hello,

I upgraded my GPU a couple of years ago but only recently started playing more demanding games and have been underwhelmed with its performance so thought this could be caused by a bottle neck from the CPU?

Should i be looking to upgrade the CPU and motherboard now or am i wrong with my thinking?

Current set up

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060​

Intel Core i5-6600K​

Motherboard Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. - Z170XP-SLI-CF
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB


Thanks
 
IMHO you are not going to get much gaming performace boost from CPU upgrade given your GPU. Besides, current intel LGA1700 socket is obsolete and will be replacesed with LGA1851 later this year with the release of Intel's 15th gen Core CPUs. This means that if you upgrade CPU now, you would not up able to upgrade again without changing your motherboard too. There is also a question of RAM - new(er) CPUs will require you to upgrade to DDR5, which would increase the upgrade cost.

If I were you, I'd wait till 15th gen Core CPUs later this year and upgrade CPU + Mobo + Ram.

If you want to upgrade anyway, the other option is to change the CPU only, staying with you current motherboard. If you can get a second hand 9600k or 9700k, that may be quite cost effective.
 
Last edited:
Most recently is baldurs gate 3, 1920/1080. It defaulted to ultra, i dropped it to High. Its mostly fine but when first launching or going into a new zone the textures can take 10 seconds to fully load.

Had a similar issue on Hogwarts legacy and Read Dead 2
 
gooche23 said:
Most recently is baldurs gate 3, 1920/1080. It defaulted to ultra, i dropped it to High. Its mostly fine but when first launching or going into a new zone the textures can take 10 seconds to fully load.

Had a similar issue on Hogwarts legacy and Read Dead 2
Click to expand...
Do you have a SSD?
 
inflynx said:
IMHO you are not going to get much gaming performace boost from CPU upgrade given your GPU. Besides, current intel LGA1700 socket is obsolete and will be replacesed with LGA1851 later this year with the release of Intel's 15th gen Core CPUs. This means that if you upgrade CPU now, you would not up able to upgrade again without changing your motherboard too. There is also a question of RAM - new(er) CPUs will require you to upgrade to DDR5, whould you increase the upgrade cost.

If I were you, I'd wait till 15th gen Core CPUs later this year and upgrade CPU + Mobo + Ram.

If you want to upgrade anyway, the other option is to change the CPU only,
Tetras said:
Do you have a SSD?
Click to expand...
Yeah but only 250gb, just has OS etc on it. Running games on standard hard drive
Click to expand...
 
I see. If you're only running a hard disk, that might be your problem with the textures, especially if your RAM is filling up. Newer games are designed to be run from a SSD, though since I don't play them, I can't say 100% that the HDD is your problem.

inflynx said:
If you want to upgrade anyway, the other option is to change the CPU only, staying with you current motherboard. If you can get a second hand 9600k or 9700k, that may be quite cost effective.
Click to expand...
The OP would need a BIOS mod to achieve that I'm afraid, at stock it'll only support 7th gen.
 
gooche23 said:
Are they as compatible with the motherboard compared to a sata ssd?
Click to expand...
Pretty much any PCI-E 3.0/4.0 SSD should work, I'd suggest something like the SN570, but if your motherboard attaches it using a standoff and screw, you'd need to have the motherboard box (unless it is already screwed into the board).

gooche23 said:
I still have a free m2 slot free so could utilise that if that’s a simpler fix.
Click to expand...
I had a google for the problem with BG3.

Some users said that upgrading to a SSD did fix the problem, some already had one and it didn't help, some deleted a cache folder, or disabled FSR/DLSS and it fixed the problem and there are also many unresolved posts.
 
Last edited:
inflynx said:
If you can get a second hand 9600k or 9700k, that may be quite cost effective.
Click to expand...

The OP's motherboard does not support that CPU.

@gooche23 Get yourself a monitoring tool like MSI Afterburner and run it with your game. Look for your CPU or GPU running at 100% This will show you where your bottleneck lies. The RTX 3060 is a decent GPU so I suspect the CPU but you need to make your purchasing decisions on hard data.

gooche23 said:
I still have a free m2 slot free so could utilise that if that’s a simpler fix.
Click to expand...

You will see an immediate benefit in game loading times. Your motherboard has 1 x M.2 Socket 3 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280 SATA & PCIe x4/x2/x1 SSD support). Someone more experienced than myself can tell you if that's NVME. The slot is PCIe v3 so a v4 drive will only work at v3 speeds but the drive can be transferred to a new motherboard later on.

If you do find the CPU to be your bottleneck, look at the AM5 platform. The CPUs use far less power and give superior gaming performance. Intel CPUs are better for general work and video editing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom