Geforce 1060 Upgrade - CPU bound by i5-4570?

[arty]

My friend is looking to upgrade his computer in order to play modern games at 1080p on 'high settings'. He will be upgrading from a Geforce 1060 (6GB I believe) and an i5-4570.

He has a total budget of around £800, which would need to cover CPU, graphics card, RAM, storage, case and PSU, and I feel that's a little low to get a really meaningful upgrade. He's also not really confident in PC building or tinkering, so I have suggested that he consider buying a reasonably good new graphics card (e.g. a 4070) on its own, and putting that into his current system, then upgrading the rest in say a year's time when he has saved up some more cash.

However, I have a feeling that he'll end up being limited by his current CPU, which I think is pretty weak. What do people think about this? If you had to upgrade this system, would you live with a better graphics card for a year or so, or go for the whole lot together? Might it even be better to do everything EXCEPT the graphics card first?

Thanks a lot for any opinions

 

[Tetras]

AMD cards usually perform better with weaker CPUs (HUB did some testing on this), so while the upgrade is more mild, if I was keeping the CPU then I'd go for something like a 6650 XT or 6700 XT.

A complete PC for £800:

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i5-12400F 2.50GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-6AR-IN) = £124.99
• 1 x Asus Prime B760M-A WIFI D4 (LGA 1700) DDR4 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6KG-AS) = £119.99
• 1 x Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (SKU: MY-0AJ-TG) = £59.99
• 1 x Sapphire Radeon RX 7600 XT Gaming OC 16GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-SPR-01589) = £329.99
• 1 x WD Blue SN580 1TB SSD NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-WDC-00540) = £65.98
• 1 x Kolink Inspire Series K6 ARGB Micro-ATX Case - Black (SKU: CA-047-KK) = £29.99
• 1 x Super Flower Leadex III ARGB 550W 80 PLUS Gold Modular Power Supply - Black (SKU: CA-063-SF) = £71.99

Total: £814.91 (includes delivery: £11.98)​

 

[arty]

Thanks. I have suggested that he go with an AMD card, but he has so far stipulated that he wants to stick with Nvidia (I'm not 100% clear as to why, but I think it's partly perceived brand reliability). I will try to persuade him again, however

 

[Tetras]

Thanks. I have suggested that he go with an AMD card, but he has so far stipulated that he wants to stick with Nvidia (I'm not 100% clear as to why, but I think it's partly perceived brand reliability). I will try to persuade him again, however

In the above build you could switch the RX 7600 XT for a 3060 12GB, they're available not much over £250 and I'd rather have that than a £300 4060 8GB, but he might think differently.

 

[arty]

That's a good shout. Apparently there is a piece of software he uses which only works on Nvidia cards. I've asked for more information, as this sounds a little spurious to me.

What do people think about my original question regarding being CPU bound? It would still be useful to get a feeling for whether a graphics card-only upgrade would be worth it.

 

[mickyflinn]

That's a good shout. Apparently there is a piece of software he uses which only works on Nvidia cards. I've asked for more information, as this sounds a little spurious to me.

What do people think about my original question regarding being CPU bound? It would still be useful to get a feeling for whether a graphics card-only upgrade would be worth it.

You will definitely get benefit upgrading to a modern CPU and improvementson FPS but you also get improvement on the 1% and.1% low FPS in game making it much smoother.

Now is it enough to warrant the cost that's always a difficult decision as it's much more then just raw power , there modern technology to benefit from and software, and some games won't run on older hardware.

Grab the GPU first see how it goes , stick with it for a while and keep saving .

Hope you have an SSD .

 

[Tetras]

What do people think about my original question regarding being CPU bound? It would still be useful to get a feeling for whether a graphics card-only upgrade would be worth it.

It is impossible to say for certain, because it is game and settings/resolution dependent. My general take would be that there's still something to gain from upgrading the 1060, but even a 3060 is going to be diminishing returns and I definitely wouldn't buy a 4070 or better with the intention to pair it with this CPU.

If I elaborate more: the problem you have with the i5-4570 is that you really need games that are from the quad core stagnation era (i.e. before or just after 1st/2nd gen Ryzen) and most of those games will run pretty well with a 1060 @ 1080p.

The games that need more than a 1060 are also likely to be newer games that want more than 4 threads and higher single core/thread performance, so while the upgrade will help, they will still perform poorly and you're looking at trying to achieve a playable framerate in the 40-60 fps range.

There are still some newer games that have room for you to push higher settings and get a benefit from the 3060 (or better), but the number of them is going to get smaller over time.

In other words: I see it as a luxury upgrade really, it gives the option of having higher quality visuals (and you could install some nice graphics mods in old games, like Skyrim), but new AAA games are going to chug on that CPU anyway.

 

[arty]

He specifically mentioned Elden Ring as an example of a modern game which does not run well on his current computer. Looking at the 'system requirements' for that, it looks to me like his CPU is the weaker link, which chimes with your points.

Thanks both for your comments. I think I'll suggest a CPU upgrade as a priority.