Upgrade or Time for a new build?

Nareik

Nareik

Nareik

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Joined
26 Nov 2020
Posts
18
Hello everyone.

Been a while since I've posted here but I'm at the crossroads with what to do now. I'm more into my gaming now and have been looking for ways to try and improve my rig. I've recently purhcased a 1440p monitor so wanting to be able to play on that without issues. My current rig can pretty much do that apart from demanding games like Cyberpunk, Stalker etc. I don't have the money to build a new rig currently but if it's the best solution I guess I could start saving. I'm currently on AM4 Chipset which limits the CPU I'm able to upgrade too but I was wondering if it's worth getting a Ryzen 7 5800x3D and chucking it into my current rig or am I best saving for a while and upgrading to AM5, which would be something like a Ryzen 7800x3D but with that comes a new motherboard, ram etc.

My current set-up is as follows:
- B450 Tomahawk Max Motherboard
- AMD Ryzen 5 3600 boosted too 4.2Ghz
- 32GB Ram (2x16GB DDR4 3200Mhz)
- Corsair 850W Gold PSU
- Asus Rog Strix RTX 3070 8GB GPU

I seem to be sitting at roughly 80 FPS on shooter games like Call of duty with pretty much maxed out settings however when I jump on a game like Stalker or Cyberpunk when I really want to enjoy the graphic design that's gone into the game the FPS tanks down on the higher settings. With some modest adjustment and DLSS I can reach 40 ish FPS.

Would it be worth changing the CPU to a better AM4 chip like the 5800x3d or am I better waiting until I can afford a whole new set-up. I would like to save for a new GPU but I'm hopeful that maybe once the 50 series comes out from Nvidia the RTX 40 cards may drop. I believe that 8GB VRAM is not really good enough for a lot of games now. (Even call of duty on Extreme settings I seem to be maxing out the VRAM usage)

Any advice would be awesome, thanks in advance :)
 
5700x3d would be a big improvement for you as you already have 32gb ram and mobo..going am5 would be a step up but that'll be another £150-200 for mobo and £80-110 for 32 6000c30/36 ram
am running a 3070ti myelsf with a 7800x3d..playing at 4k and it isn't too bad, but don't think i'm playing the most demanding games..just bough cyberpunk from bf , so will be interesting when i load it up and see what i get
 
Personally, I would slap a 5700x3d in it and then wait a couple of years to upgrade the whole system. It will help with 1% lows as well as many games benefiting generally from the faster chip.

As always, it's going to come down to budget.

A whole new AM5 Mobo/CPU/Ram plus a GPU of at least a 4070TI/4080S/7900XT/X is going to be a lot more expensive than flogging the 3600 and sourcing a sub £150 5700x3d, which you might be able to get even more life out of with one of the GPU's second hand in a couple of years.

I'm more Frames per £, so I'm sticking with AM4 for as long as feasibly possible.
 
Thanks for the replies, yes budget doesn’t really allow for a new setup in the near future.

The clock speed on the 5800x3D is 4.1 I believe and mine is 4.2 but with less cache, does the cache mean it will run games better?
 
Thanks for the reply, I’m not the most knowledgeable when it comes to this, how would I find out if I’m “GPU bound”?

Thanks in advance
 
R5 3600 is not great with a 3070, you are not getting them most from it. I'd get a cheap imported 5700X3D and then see how much of an uplift that offer you. The hang back until Q1 next year for the GPU 5xxx parts, and 8xxx, see where the true price to performance is at.
 
Nareik said:
Thanks for the reply, I’m not the most knowledgeable when it comes to this, how would I find out if I’m “GPU bound”?

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
If you run something like MSI Afterburner (i.e. the stats you usually see in the top left corner of reviews) then you could check to see the utillisation of the CPU/GPU and see if either is sitting around twiddling its thumbs.
You could spend some time looking on YouTube for 3070/CPU videos to get an idea, I'd imagine they're reasonably balanced depending on what resolution/settings you run at.

The 5700X3D will likerly give you better 1% lows, will it be night and day? Probably not, a new GPU would make a bigger difference but you're looking at waaay more than a 5700X3D will cost
 
So I have done the above and run MSI afterburner whilst playing Stalker for a bit. It shows the GPU is running between 75-90% and the CPU is 70-95% so I would assume updating just the CPU wouldn't achieve a huge amount?
 
Nareik said:
So I have done the above and run MSI afterburner whilst playing Stalker for a bit. It shows the GPU is running between 75-90% and the CPU is 70-95% so I would assume updating just the CPU wouldn't achieve a huge amount?
Click to expand...
X3d CPU would give a decent uplift in FPS on average sell your 3600 making it a cheap upgrade.


 
Nareik said:
So I have done the above and run MSI afterburner whilst playing Stalker for a bit. It shows the GPU is running between 75-90% and the CPU is 70-95% so I would assume updating just the CPU wouldn't achieve a huge amount?
Click to expand...
That's a textbook CPU bottleneck.

I'd forget GPUs for a few months and focus on the rest of your system - upgrading your CPU would let your GPU perform at it's best while you wait for good GPU deals.

I would be getting a AM5 system with a 7600 (or 7500f from China) so you can upgrade later. A 5700X3D would get you a nice uplift but that's it for AM4, so you might find yourself in a similar position depending on what GPU you get - 5070 and below you would be fine with for a while (I'm guessing).

For context I was seeing minor bottlenecking with a 5700x + 3080 12gb on CP2077 (nowhere near what you're seeing) and going to 9800X3D gave me 10-15fps. I've not tested lots of games but the performance improvement was enough to make me feel better about my 3080 for the moment.
 
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