Upgrade Advice 4 different choices

intens1ty · Monday at 22:38

Hi all,

If one of you kind experts could give me some advice...

Due to unfortunate circumstances the only way I can upgrade my 8 year old pc is to go prebuilt from one specific vendor. There are a few options to choose from and I'm struggling a bit trying to find the configuration that will give me the best experience for the longest and shaft me the least. Here are the options:

AMD 9800X3D RX 9070 XT ASUS TUF GAMING B650

i7-14700KF RTX 5080 ASUS PRIME Z790-P

AMD 9800X3D RTX 5070Ti ASUS TUF GAMING B650-PLUS

AMD 9900X RTX 5070Ti MSI PRO B850-P

All builds come with 32gb fast ram. I would expect bigger savings with the 9070XT, but it's only 100£ cheaper while the rest are all the same price. I have waited to upgrade before playing any raytracing titles, so I'm really excited for that, especially cyberpunk. From what I can see the motherboards aren't the best.

Gray2233 · Monday at 22:41

What do you use the PC for exactly?

Is it just gaming or are workloads involved?

Can you list the exact cost of each system please?

intens1ty · Monday at 22:53

It's just gaming to be honest. All systems cost 2500£ except the 9070xt is £100 less.

hornetstinger · Monday at 22:54

Why do you think those boards aren't very good?

You don't need a £400 motherboard.

intens1ty · Monday at 23:00

They are not the best... That's all, but ultimately one of the reasons why I'm asking for help.

Gray2233 · Monday at 23:02

intens1ty said:
They are not the best... That's all, but ultimately one of the reasons why I'm asking for help.

Assuming they all cost the same:

The i7-14700KF RTX 5080 ASUS PRIME Z790-P should be immediately discounted if you only game, and I'd be hesitant even if core heavy workloads were involved. It's a Raptor-Lake CPU and they have known problems with degradation and failure.

The AMD 9800X3D RTX 5070Ti ASUS TUF GAMING B650-PLUS would be my choice is purely for gaming by a mile, the 9800X3D is pretty much the best gaming CPU on the planet right now and I find Nvidia superior for the ever needed upscaling required in games with DLSS vs AMD's FSR. There are some caveats to this however, if you specifically only play certain games you might be better off with a 9070XT, I believe Call of Duty massively favours AMD for example.

If you have mixed gaming/productivity workloads that can make use of the CPU and GPU the 14700K/5080 might be worth considering, but I'd still lean toward the 9900X/5070TI unless your applications massively favoured the Intel CPU.

For reference, the 5070ti and 9070XT are on average roughly equal for gaming. The 5070ti costs a lot more outside of prebuilds, has the benefits of DLSS and better RT/PT in games. The 5080 is around 15-20% more performance than them, the reason it's being linked with a 14700 CPU is probably because nobody is buying them and they're trying to incentivise to clear stock. It is a very good productivity CPU and strong gaming CPU, but the aforementioned problems do put people off.

Tetras · Monday at 23:03

intens1ty said:
I have waited to upgrade before playing any raytracing titles, so I'm really excited for that, especially cyberpunk. From what I can see the motherboards aren't the best.

5080 is not meaningfully faster than a 5070 Ti for gaming, BUT if you want to enable all the latest shiny stuff at a high res then that 10-20% can be the difference between playable or not.

intens1ty said:
trying to find the configuration that will give me the best experience for the longest and shaft me the least.

9800X3D pulls a lot of extra frames in games that love the 3D cache and since the 14th gen CPUs may be liable to degradation, I'd want to know the prebuild company will honour Intel's extended (5 year) warranty before purchase.

You'd have to be very sure that the 5080 is worth it in your specific scenarios.

intens1ty said:
AMD 9800X3D RTX 5070Ti ASUS TUF GAMING B650-PLUS

AMD 9900X RTX 5070Ti MSI PRO B850-P

9900X is a good productivity CPU (similar to 14700K overall for multitasking), but for gaming you'd buy the 9800X3D instead.

hornetstinger · Monday at 23:03

intens1ty said:
They are not the best... That's all, but ultimately one of the reasons why I'm asking for help.

The new £800 and CPU is the best
So is 256gb of ram
And 8tb nvme
And 3kw PSU also

Should I continue?

Gray2233 · Monday at 23:05

intens1ty said:
It's just gaming to be honest. All systems cost 2500£ except the 9070xt is £100 less.

AMD 9800X3D RTX 5070Ti ASUS TUF GAMING B650-PLUS

Easily, all day of the week unless you exclusively play CoD.

This does assume same pricing or within £100.

intens1ty · Monday at 23:16

Thank you all, the 9800x3d + 5070ti was my first choice, but honestly I got a bit seduced by various reviews saying that the raytracing is a lot better on 5080 and 5070ti can fall behind sometimes. Just needed to hear that the CPU will be able to make up for it. My old 2070 can no longer handle my native resolution of 2560x1440 in new titles, making hitching, stuttering and slowdowns almost unbearable.

Gray2233 · Monday at 23:20

intens1ty said:
Thank you all, the 9800x3d + 5070ti was my first choice, but honestly I got a bit seduced by various reviews saying that the raytracing is a lot better on 5080 and 5070ti can fall behind sometimes. Just needed to hear that the CPU will be able to make up for it. My old 2070 can no longer handle my native resolution of 2560x1440 in new titles, making hitching, stuttering and slowdowns almost unbearable.

A 9800X3D + 5070TI will run incredibly well with any game at 1440P, you might need to use DLSS for one or two but that's going to be the case no matter what.

RT performance isn't a concern between either, they're "good" at it with upscaling, the falldown is Path Tracing and to be frank a 5080 isn't going to be playable in that regard when a 5070ti isn't anyway.

Tetras · Monday at 23:32

intens1ty said:
Just needed to hear that the CPU will be able to make up for it.

intens1ty said:
My old 2070 can no longer handle my native resolution of 2560x1440 in new titles, making hitching, stuttering and slowdowns almost unbearable.

It doesn't really "make up for it". If you're loading the graphics card heavily with stuff like ray tracing / path tracing, then you're going to be GPU-limited with a CPU faster than 12th gen / Ryzen 5000.

But, in certain games at a modest resolution (e.g. not 4K ultrawide), then the X3D can pull a strong lead in benchmarks, even with a 5070 Ti. BG3 is a good example of that, where the X3D's minimums are nearly higher than 14th gen's average at 1440p.

intens1ty · Monday at 23:40

Gray2233 said:
A 9800X3D + 5070TI will run incredibly well with any game at 1440P, you might need to use DLSS for one or two but that's going to be the case no matter what.

RT performance isn't a concern between either, they're "good" at it with upscaling, the falldown is Path Tracing and to be frank a 5080 isn't going to be playable in that regard when a 5070ti isn't anyway.

I was hoping that I could at least be able to see how pathtracing looks like without it being a slideshow.

Tetras said:
It doesn't really "make up for it". If you're loading the graphics card heavily with stuff like ray tracing / path tracing, then you're going to be GPU-limited with a CPU faster than 12th gen / Ryzen 5000.

But, in certain games at a modest resolution (e.g. not 4K ultrawide), then the X3D can pull a strong lead in benchmarks, even with a 5070 Ti. BG3 is a good example of that, where the X3D's minimums are nearly higher than 14th gen's average at 1440p.

I tend to play a lot of indie games and some can be more CPU dependant, for example Project Zomboid. Probably "making up for it" isn't the best way to describe it.

13oots2 · 2026-04-17T00:08:23+0100

Tetras said:
5080 is not meaningfully faster than a 5070 Ti for gaming, BUT if you want to enable all the latest shiny stuff at a high res then that 10-20% can be the difference between playable or not.

9800X3D pulls a lot of extra frames in games that love the 3D cache and since the 14th gen CPUs may be liable to degradation, I'd want to know the prebuild company will honour Intel's extended (5 year) warranty before purchase.

You'd have to be very sure that the 5080 is worth it in your specific scenarios.

9900X is a good productivity CPU (similar to 14700K overall for multitasking), but for gaming you'd buy the 9800X3D instead.

The 9900X is a great CPU, pretty good all rounder, handles pretty much anything I throw at mine. Admittedly am using a 5090, that was more for AI than the odd game I throw at it, Borderlands 4 was my games splurge for the year.