Is my Ryzen 5 1600X a bottleneck?

[sagramore]

Hey everyone. Long time since I posted outside of the GD subforum so be kind

I run the following rig:

• AMD Ryzen 5 1600X 14 nm (cooled with Coolermaster Masterliquid 240 AIO watercooling)
• Asus Prime X370-Pro (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX
• Zotac nVidia GeForce RTX 2080 8GB PCI-e
• Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-21300C16 (2666MHz) [CMK16GX4M2A266C16]
• OS drive - Samsung SM961 Polaris 256GB M.2 PCI-e SSD
• EVGA Supernova GS 550W ‘80 Plus Gold’ fully modular
• In-Win 707 Full Tower in Black/Red with window
• LG 32GK850F 32" 1440p VA FREESYNC 2 HDR 144Hz LED monitor primary with a crappy 22" 1080p Dell secondary

Might seem weird to have that GPU in there but I basically built it the day the 1600X released and went budget 1060 3GB for a few years before upgrading monitor and GPU earlier this year.

That being said, I feel like my FPS in most of the games I play is way lower than it should be for a £600+ graphics card at 1440p. Annoyingly it's hard to compare because my main games are relatively "unpopular" but Hunt: Showdown and Escape from Tarkov are my current main obsessions and I have to have them on med-low to get a decent stable FPS over 60, which just feels.... wrong?

I have online friends that have the same GPU and they either lie about their FPS or they don't have the same problems as me and as far as I can tell the only difference between our specs is the CPU.

SO - my question is thus - would upgrading my 1600X to something like a 3600X combined with some 3200 MHz faster RAM likely improve my experience? I have already updated my motherboard BIOS so it should be compatible with the new gen Ryzen chips but I'd rather avoid changing motherboard if at all possible despite the chipset being kinda old now.

Advice gratefully received!

 

[sagramore]

Yes, an R5 3600 will make things better. Had same setup - 1600 and 1060. Upgraded to 5700XT and went with R5 3600.

First Gen needs really help from fast ram and tight timings. But, with a 2080, the ipc lift is needed as well.

Thanks for that - yeah I think that running some 3200 MHz memory along with the CPU upgrade might make quite a difference to the setup as it currently stands....

Hardware Unboxed produced a video only the other day which might be useful on this subject, though a 2600 was used. Still, might be worth watching.

Thanks for that, really helpful. He didn't have a 2080 in the mix, but the 2070 Super is pretty similar in spec so I just looked at that while watching the comparison with the 2600 vs 3600. I figure whatever the differences they'd be exaggerated by my having an even older 1600 as well. I think the money shot comes here:

Spoiler: (large image)

Hunt: Showdown is a Crytek game on the Cryengine so comparison to Far Cry is a good one. There's a solid 15% increase in average FPS and an even larger one in the 1% min FPS which would likely be even more if comparing the 1600.
Sounds like it probably would make a fair difference to my actual in-game performance to upgrade.

 

[sagramore]

I play a lot of Hunt Showdown with a 2600x but a completely different GPU - Vega 56

My experience of it is one minute it runs at a solid 70fps with a mix of high and medium settings and the next there are inexplicable fps drops into the 50's that freesync can't even save me from

If you're experience sounds similar it's probably just the game

Can't speak for Tarkov I keep meaning to try it

Not to disrupt my own thread, but if you like Hunt then Tarkov's worth a try. Totally different aesthetic, but the whole "gear up, go in, extract" feeling is obviously comparable. It's INSANELY complicated though. I've thrown ~40 h at it in the past week since I bought it and I still have no idea what's going on.

 

[sagramore]

I've only watched the video once but it seemed to me that cranking up the detail - especially at 1440p, looked to minimize the problem greatly. Someone on 1080p (middle settings) will have much more of an issue.

I agree - however I am also trying to take into account that I'm on a 1600X and have a 2080, so compared to a 2600 and a 2070 Super my issue is likely exaggerated. I am still very tempted to try the upgrade.

 

[sagramore]

Definately go with a 3700x or wait until Ryzen 4000 lands later this year. No point in messing about with 6 cores if a 2080 was within your budget.

Haha it's partly because of the 2080 purchase that I'm trying to not go overboard on the other costs... But I will consider a 3700X and see what the difference in price looks like.

You've got the AM4 board so just a CPU drop in should suffice, if you've got decent RAM too.

Just seen you've 2666 RAM. Get yourself some 3200 or if your board supports it, 3600 RAM and sell the other stuff to recoup costs, whilst RAM prices are so low.

3600 RAM and a Ryzen 3600 would unleash the 2080

Yeah my mobo is relatively old but I've flashed the BIOS already to be compatible with the 3XXX Ryzens and 3200 MHz RAM. I think 3600 MHz is too much for it though and I really want to avoid a board upgrade too.

Far Cry is on the dunia engine nowadays, which was forked from Cryengine well over a decade ago.

I was unaware of that, oh well!

 

[sagramore]

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who replied in this thread.
I finally bit the bullet and bought the Ryzen 3600X and some Corsair 3200 MHz RAM.

After installation I was a bit worried because all the benchmarking I'd done beforehand (Prime95, 3DMark, etc) seemed almost entirely unchanged and I was starting to wonder what was going on. Then I booted some games.....

Hunt: Showdown went from ~50-60 FPS (with lows of 30 odd) on low-mid settings to sticking above 80 solid on ultra. Escape from Tarkov was similar, with a solid 70+ even on maxed out settings in all situations. HUGE increase in real-world performance.

Thanks everyone!