Upgrade Time?

[cainey]

Hi folks, yep it's another "should I upgrade?" post. I've had the same motherboard, RAM and CPU for about 7 years now and I'm beginning to see some performance issues. Nothing major but enough for me to feel like throwing some cash at it.

Current spec is
i7 3770K@ 4.00GHz
Asus Maximus V Extreme Z77
Corsair H100
16GB Corsair Vengence Black DDR3
Gigabyte GTX 1080
Corsair 850W HX Modular PSU

I'd appreciate any advice and opinions, cheers.

 

[cainey]

seen your rocking ultra wide 1440p - in theory your i7 can clock higher , and shouldn't hinter most games out their bar the most recent AAA titles which do like extra core counts .

gtx 1080 may struggle to push high frames , personally feel its a great GPU for standard 1440p 60/144hz screens but ultra wide 1440p normally quote 1080ti were I could .

able to wait till computex ? June time. ryzen 3*** will be out/shown. As your either going to go 8 core ryzen ( see little point in 6 core if you've got i7 4 core that can clock higher with better IPC) or 8 core intel

Thanks for the reply, Orbital. I'll see what extra I can squeeze out of my i7 and you're right about the 1080 as it does struggle a little at that resolution. I may look towards a 2080 at some point what with the 1080ti prices being what they are now. I can wait another 6 months I guess but I'll probably go for an 8 core intel cpu. Choices choices.

 

[cainey]

Looks like an extremely respectable spec PC. Have you tried overclocking the GTX 1080? You have Gysnc on your monitor, so can't imagine frame rates being that intolerable (hell I just upgraded to a 1070 Ti for 3440x1440, a monitor without gsync but a max refresh of 60 hz, which the GPU achieves)

It's a rough time to upgrade, what with Ryzen 3 due to smash the CPU market and the RTX series setting up this generation of graphics cards as relatively low performance gains for maximum cost. Their main selling point (ray tracing) is irrelevant at 3440x1440, as may well be DLSS.

I'd try to figure out if your issues are due to a CPU or GPU bottleneck (I'm not at all familiar with Intel, but the mention of DDR3 is always a cause for concern). A CPU bottleneck can really undermine a decent graphics card in some games/moments in games.

Frame rates are rarely intolerable unless I push the settings on AAA games way too high. To be honest I'm looking to upgrade as something to do rather than something that needs doing really. You might be right about the bottlenecking a friend who also likes to build his own PCs suspected the same when he saw my spec.
What's the buzz about Ryzen 3? Is it rumoured to be a decent leap forward?
Out of interest why is ray tracing irrelevant at 3440x1440?