With the release of the 5000 series AMD CPUs and Radeon 6000 series GPUs, has AMD, not only set the new CPU benchmark by blazing past Intel's chips and equaling NVidia but at a lower cost base, but also extended the life of past gen CPUs and GPUs.
Pending ACTUAL gaming benchmarks utilising a range of GPUs(which may already be up on YouTube as I write this), gamers seem to have the opportunity for 3 easy and affordable upgrades :
- Keep my Intel/AMD3000 CPU and spend the money on a better 3080/6800XT to increase my FPS hopefully by at least 20%.
- Keep my 5800XT/2070Super and upgrade to AMD's 5000 CPU (motherboard dependant) to increase my FPS hopefully by at least 20%.
- Upgrade both CPU(possibly motherboard if coming from Intel) and GPU - FPS increase is dependant on where you are coming from.
Under normal circumstances, the Light Gamer is the winner when new hardware is released as they suck up all the cheap stock of outdated hardware but, with the 5000 series CPU being so good and the lack of stock of 30 series Nvidia GPUs, I feel it is going to be a tough road for them. On the other hand, option 3 may be more affordable as ever because you won't have to 'give away' your old tech to make way for new.
The mostly predicted crash in 20 series GPUs has not materialised and is less likely now - in fact the 2070Super I bought on sale is now $140-$240 dearer @ MSY/PCCAseGear.
If the BIOS upgrades for B450's occurs for most boards, their life span and desirability will now increase as a cheap avenue to build a good cheap system. If not, the AMD 3000 CPUs will remain strong as supply is likely to dwindle and B450's will support them.
This should mean that the 2nd hand market should also stay strong if everyone doesn't just dump all their hardware at once. Anybody who did that as part of the 30 series overhype may now be regretting that as they sit in a waiting list trying to decide if they keep hanging on or swap to a Radeon - whereas they may have been able to upgrade to a 5000 series CPU and extend the life of their 2080Ti until the prices of new cards stabalised.
Option 1 is totally reliable on the availability/affordability of the Radeon 6000 series and future stock of Nvidia 30 series. I am worried about the Aus price due to the obvious ramping on the 5000 series CPU. Now AMD new their benchmarks of the 5000 series CPU was going to blow away Intel and their own chips, so they had some wiggle room, whereas the Radeon 6000 seems on par with Nvidia so they may have to make it a value sale to increase market share. Of course, the lack of Nvidia availabilty doesn't help…
I personally got a 3700X @ $415 from CA EBay sale so 5000 series does not make sense. I was hoping for a 5700X at a reasonable price so the 3700X is still in it's box but I will probably take option 1 and match it with a 6800XT. I have a spare B450 board that I will wait to see what happens with the BIOS and may use a 5000 series on it to stretch the legs of the 2070 Super that will be replaced by the 6800XT - if I can get one…
So what do you guys think???
Real question is what monitor do you use?