X370 with Modern Graphics Card

bathrobe

bathrobe

bathrobe

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United Kingdom
Hi all,

I've been an Asus Crosshair Hero VI X370 owner since the early days of Ryzen, initially with it hosting a Ryzen 7 1700x. These days, after a bios update, it's sporting a funky new Ryzen 7 5700X3D which was quite the upgrade from a first gen chip.

Currently I have this paired with Radeon RX 6800 and am very tempted to upgrade to a Radeon RX 9070 XT, however I've heard on some forums that this motherboard is simply too old to cope and will end up with a stuttering framerate. I know the board is only on PCIe 3.0, however GamersNexus recently tested the various PCIe generations with a GeForce RTX 5090, and it showed little or no impact (5% slower)

So, what I'd like to discuss is whether this is a sensible upgrade, does anybody see problems on the horizon for me. Does anybody have direct experience of using this or a similar combination? Do we agree that the posts I've read on other forums are just some berk on the internet who doesn't know very much :)

For clarity, my current specification can be viewed on pc part picker here:
https://************.com/user/bathrobe/saved/GTsGxr

Cheers,
Rob.
 
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Ignoring 5% difference between pcie gens for the moment, only thing that comes to mind is whether your x370 can have resizable bar enabled on it … which is more prevalent these days. If it can, I don’t see why it shouldn’t just drop right in.
 
I enabled resizable bar after updating the bios without any issues, it wasn't originally available on the motherboard and I didn't even know what it was when I first saw it.
My gut feeling is that the upgrade won't cause any issues, the CPU and PSU should be able to handle the load, all of the Graphics Card PCIe lanes go directly to the CPU so the motherboard itself shouldn't play a major part. I guess I'm looking for more experienced folk to validate my reasoning.
 
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The other consideration is whether the new GPU you are looking at is actually PCI-E 16x or whether it's one of the models subject to "cost cutting", and is only electrically PCI-E 8x.

(As PCI-E 3.0 8x is obviously a bit more limiting)
 
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No intention of falling into the PCIe 8x trap.
I think that's something the lower end nVidia cards do, which always seemed a bit daft to me. Logically if you're on an older platform with older PCIe (like me) you might consider upgrading to a lower end current gen graphics card. But with only 8 lanes you'll get a poorer experience.
I'm looking at more of a mid range upgrade, the current favourite is the 9070XT, possibly stretching to 5070TI
 
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bathrobe said:
Currently I have this paired with Radeon RX 6800 and am very tempted to upgrade to a Radeon RX 9070 XT, however I've heard on some forums that this motherboard is simply too old to cope and will end up with a stuttering framerate. I know the board is only on PCIe 3.0, however GamersNexus recently tested the various PCIe generations with a GeForce RTX 5090, and it showed little or no impact (5% slower)
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Are those experiences on the other forums actual user experience or just an opinion?

You often see people say "omgz PCI-E 3.0", without knowing the facts of how little it matters for 16 lane cards, but if they're reports from someone who has used the card I'd find it more meaningful.

Generally the performance hit is very small in benchmarks, but some games seem to use (stream over?) the PCI-E bus a lot more and can show bigger differences. Stuttering is one of those awful topics that comes up a lot and has rarely any resolution, with everything from the drivers, to the motherboard, to the mouse mat getting the blame for it. I've never seen any evidence that older PCI-E = more stuttering, however, if you do manage to run out of VRAM, it is true that the performance impact is way bigger on old PCIE versions than newer versions. If you run out of VRAM on PCIE 3.0 you're probably into slideshow territory, though if you manage that with a high-end card you're in slideshow territory anyway.

On the compatibility side, this is just my not terribly well informed opinion, but I'd say there have been more reports of issues with newer cards and old boards than I've seen with any other release. Why that would be, I'm not sure, maybe it just reflects that with the focus on AI, their efforts on QA/testing are as bad as the drivers have been lately.
 
I wish I'd kept track of the links so I was able to quote, but it was very much people giving opinion rather than experience. I've hunted around on the web for people with direct experence, so far I've not come across any concrete complaints or issues using this motherboard and card combination.
This shouldn't be too surprising as the X370 was released in 2017, I doubt many are left in the wild and still being used as a gaming rig.
 
A quick update for anybody in a similar situation, last week I decided to take a punt on the Radeon RX 9070 XT and it's working flawlessly.
So, for anybody else who is considering a similar upgrade, I'd say go for it.

For reference the main components in my build are:
Ryzen 7 5700 X3D
32GB DDR4 3200
ASUS ROG Crosshair Hero VI (X370, BIOS version 8801)
Radeon RX 9070 XT (Sapphire Pulse)
Corsair RM 850X PSU
 
rare said:
Pretty incredible longevity from that motherboard
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bathrobe said:
This shouldn't be too surprising as the X370 was released in 2017, I doubt many are left in the wild and still being used as a gaming rig.
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I don't know whether to be offended or laugh but there are many pre-Ryzen systems still gaming :D

I'm on an i7-4770k still, albeit with a GTX 1070 and I think my window for upgrading just the graphics card has passed. Still - every generation I consider upgrading, then tell myself I'll do it when I see actual performance issues in the games I play.
 
I still have a system with a 4790k in great chips those 4th gen, still surprisingly capable for older games and just general windows tasks. I have one in a machine with windows XP on, not surprisingly it’s a bit quick.
 
LuckyBenski said:
I don't know whether to be offended or laugh but there are many pre-Ryzen systems still gaming
:D


I'm on an i7-4770k still, albeit with a GTX 1070 and I think my window for upgrading just the graphics card has passed. Still - every generation I consider upgrading, then tell myself I'll do it when I see actual performance issues in the games I play.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's something to be offended about. But, you have a point, there are lots of old PCs still being used to play games and this thread is might even be useful for them. :)
However, the quote was in the context of finding information about upgrades and not many people are still discussing X370 boards. Perhaps I could have phrased it better and said something like "not many are left in the wild and still being upgraded"

In any case, if you take a look at this benchmark comparison of my X370 vs a X870E with the same graphics card you can see the older kit still performs well.
3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 (Old vs New Comparison)
Keep in mind that in many real gaming scenarios, the CPU will have more impact than a synthetic benchmark.
 
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Still rocking my CH6 as well (1700X, 3700X and currently have a 5800X3D) which I bought for £231 in 2017 - £310 in today's money. Cracking bit of kit.

Top end Crosshairs can be double or nearly triple that, ridiculous.
 
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