Upgrade for higher FPS and no drops

[RetroPug]

Hi,

I mainly play Squad on fairly low/medium settings and get up to 80fps, however if a lot is going on it can be quite low, around 35-40. I also sometimes experience sudden stutters where it drops to 1-5fps.

Looking at the overlay on MSI Afterburner my CPU is maxing out from time to time, and also my RAM usage hovers around 6.5gb but can easily reach 7-7.5GB so potentially this is also maxing out sometimes. Temperatures seem OK. I assume the maxing out is the cause of the huge stutters where it drops to 1-5fps.

My PC was a prebuilt bundle from OC in late 2017, all I changed was the case and it was sold as having a mild overclock on the CPU:

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7600K CPU @ 3.80GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB on GP106-A
Motherboard: Gigabyte Technology Z170-Gaming K3-CF
SSD: Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB
HDD: Unsure but fairly normal 2TB
RAM: 8GB
PSU: Unsure but will open the case and update this thread

As above, I currently only really play Squad and CSGO. Ideally, I'd like to play Squad on decent settings for a good graphical experience as it is a decent looking game, but I'm keen to establish what is possible for what kind of budget- for example if my CPU is bottlenecking and I can inexpensively upgrade that and the RAM and leave my motherboard and GPU and get better average FPS with no drops, that might be a cheap fix/upgrade.

I understand that having no fixed budget is a bit vague- I'd like to understand if I can swap a couple of components, or if doing so is a false economy. Overall I'm quite happy with the PC and the performance drops in Squad are the only issue I've had. Any input/suggestions welcome.

Thank you!

 

[Grimley]

Hello
Cheapest would be to upgrade the RAM from 8GB to 16GB. GFX card should be OK for Squad & CSGO. Squad recommends 6 core CPU in their requirement specs. 2nd hand 7700K are not cheap though so that would be a false economy.
See how you get on with 16GB of RAM. I'd replace rather than add to, as some motherboards do not sit well with 4 sticks of RAM instead of 2, despite having 4 RAM slots in the board.

 

[RetroPug]

I probably will replace the RAM with 2x 8GB.

My CPU is definitely maxing out on occasion whilst playing Squad. Am I limited to Intel CPUs with my current motherboard? I'm not averse to spending on an upgraded CPU.

 

[Zefan]

You've done half the work already by bothering to monitor your resource utilisation during load. So many don't, and just upgrade blindfolded!

You say your CPU is maxing out "from time to time", now that means the rest of the time it will be the the GPU. I'd advise monitoring as you have been, and checking what is going on at the exact times you experience the issue.

 

[RetroPug]

I've been tweaking game settings and also have looked at my NVIDIA settings and adjusted some and have improved things a little. However, I'm still considering upgrading. As a reply states, a 2nd hand 7700k is not cheap for a relatively small upgrade.

I'm now considering a new motherboard, RAM and CPU. Are there any decent motherboards that are compatible with my current GPU but will also be suitable for a decent GPU upgrade in a year or two, that will work with some of the current intel CPUs?