Gaming PC Parts Upgrade Advice

• 

  JordyStepho on 12/04/2022 - 17:06

  -6

  Dude you are doing it wrong, that 1060 is the problem, not the CPU.

  if $700 is budget, don't upgrade, wait til you have 2 or 3k budget.

• 

  AndyC1 on 12/04/2022 - 17:17

  So you are using 20% to 60% of what and you are upgrading it and keeping the device that is the bottleneck in your system.

  You need to do some research on how to find what your bottleneck is on your PC when playing games and it will jump out and be obvious once you figure it out.

  Rather than say let OP figure it out so next time Op can do it again… and again….

  • 

    McOzbargainer on 12/04/2022 - 17:49

    So you are using 20% to 60% of what and you are upgrading it and keeping the device that is the bottleneck in your system.

    My CPU currently is 4 cores, 25% is 1 core. 100% usage would be at all 4 cores.

    My point is that my cpu is always pegged at maximum single core compute. The GPU usage won't go above 60% which means the CPU is bottleneck it. Arma 3 and X-Plane are very CPU intensive.

    • 

      Kangal on 12/04/2022 - 20:18

      No.
      Your system is well balanced, spec-wise. Backup everything, and do a fresh install. Then copy your data back to the fresh install (don't do recovery). And look into if the perhaps the latest drivers are affecting your system (maybe roll back a couple editions). Overall, you should get 100% cpu usage and 100% gpu usage… just tune the settings on a per-game basis.

      Your biggest bottleneck is not your CPU, GPU, or Memory Size.
      It is actually your RAM-SPEED. This is DDR3 (1600 or 2133) and all current (2017-2022) games are made for DDR4 (3200). Whilst upcoming and new games (2023-etc) are targeting DDR5 (4800) speeds.

      So if the above fresh install, and driver inspection, and per-game settings don't fix things to your satisfaction…. don't upgrade. You would be better off selling that as-is, and buying a new system that is also well balanced.

      • 

        McOzbargainer on 12/04/2022 - 20:42

        Your system is well balanced, spec-wise. Backup everything, and do a fresh install. Then copy your data back to the fresh install (don't do recovery). And look into if the perhaps the latest drivers are affecting your system (maybe roll back a couple editions). Overall, you should get 100% cpu usage and 100% gpu usage… just tune the settings on a per-game basis.

        On Windows, 100% is all cores. Most games a singlethreaded therefore 25% is equivalent to 100% on 1 core.

        Done that numerous times, I'm actually a Linux user daily and I have the same problem under Linux.

        I actually tested ram speed for a research projects and the difference was minimal. ~3% maximum

        The testing on this website seems to echo my results
        https://www.pcgamer.com/au/does-ram-speed-matter-gaming-amd-…

        I'd rather not throw more money at this current platform in the hope of achieving a minimal gain.
        DDR4 3200 is cheaper than DDR3 2133

        • 

          Kangal on 12/04/2022 - 21:21

          +1

          @McOzbargainer: Must have been a shoddy research.
          You can't seriously be comparing Late-DDR3 speeds, to the likes of Late-DDR4 (or Early-DDR5) speeds. There's a huge difference in latency and bandwidth. The ~3% difference either comes from applications that aren't affected by memory performance, or that you have compared something else (eg DDR3-2133 vs DDR3-1600).

          Your system only supports DDR3 and actually maxes out at 2133 speeds, it probably has a 1600 kit installed as these were most common. Because it maxes out at 2133, and that's been discontinued, of course availability will be scarce and prices would be premium. But that doesn't make it better than a DDR4-3200 kit which is pretty cheap at the moment.
          …my point here being that even if you wanted to throw money at it, you won't get far, because you cannot use DDR5 or DDR4 memory.

          Just to drive my point home, look at the new Valve SteamDeck. There are no complaints (instead praises) about the CPU performance of the VSD, so does that mean it has a faster CPU? No. The Zen2 cpu (15W ~3.0GHz) is roughly the same performance as your (80W ~4.0GHz) i7-3700 cpu. Even the GPU performance between the two isn't too far off (GTX 1060 vs GTX 1050~RDNA-2). The biggest performance difference between the VSD and your System is the Memory Speed. It's DDR3-1600 (?) versus the likes of DDR5-5500. The memory system in the VSD has low latency and enough bandwidth to feed it's CPU. Unlike your "ancient" 2013 system which is choked by modern games.

          If anything, you should be happy with the performance you have. In usual times, your system would long be obsolete and having compatibility difficulties, let alone running new applications. Never has the performance of computing been as slow/steady as during the 2011-2017 period known as AMD's Slumber/Intel's Monopoly. That is why I recommended you try a fresh install/drivers/settings or replace the entire system.

          • 

            McOzbargainer on 12/04/2022 - 22:35

            @Kangal:

            The Zen2 cpu (15W ~3.0GHz) is roughly the same performance as your (80W ~4.0GHz) i7-3700 cpu. Even the GPU performance between the two isn't too far off (GTX 1060 vs GTX 1050~RDNA-2). The biggest performance difference between the VSD and your System is the Memory Speed. It's DDR3-1600 (?) versus the likes of DDR5-5500.

            You've completely forgotten that the 4770 is from 2013 and the custom cpu are 8 years apart. CPU's have improved dramatically over 8 years, especially with the competition created by the original Zen from 2017. IPC, process node, etc

            Find me some evidence that RAM speed is a major factor in frame rates at higher settings.

            If you looked at the link I sent you, you can see the difference for ram speed only occurs at frame rates in the hundreds. I don't play on low/medium.

            • 

              Kangal on 12/04/2022 - 22:58

              +1

              @McOzbargainer: You wrote 3770 up there. And your point is, well, pointless. The two CPUs are evenly matched when it comes to performance, I took the IPC differences into account.

              Who said anything about "higher settings"?
              I've only talked about old game vs new game, and old system vs new system.

              Yeah, and if you bothered to read the link correctly… you will notice this is comparing DDR vs DDR4. Even their "worst" kit was pretty good, as it has tight timings which means better latency despite less bandwidth. Hence, the 2400-CL14 can hang with the 4000-CL22 kit. What I was talking about above is DDR3 vs DDR4, and that's a whole another paradigm.

              But you are missing the forest for the trees. Stop defending your system, and accept that it is outdated and can't be made faster due to bottlenecks (it is well-balanced as is). If a clean install didn't fix your issues, and there's nothing obvious that you can fix it, there must be other issues (perhaps a motherboard/hardware or driver). Or you either have unrealistic expectations, or having a weird bug with a specific game.

              Not sure what you want me to tell you at this point….

• 

  smashman42 on 12/04/2022 - 17:17

  Check out the newly released non X 5600 if it is available. If the price isn't much different sure get the X, but the difference is hardly anything performance wise. AMD's cheaper CPUs below that are all garbage APUs with munted cache, so don't go below 5600 non X.

  Also compare with Intel's 12400(F) on a quality B460 DDR4 board - they're pretty close performance wise so probs best to get whatever board/chip combo is cheaper in that 6c12t bracket.

  And yeah, you'll go from single threaded bottlenecked to GPU bottlenecked really fast with this upgrade and you'll want a new GPU pretty quickly.

  Is your I assume non K 3770 on a Z series mobo? Cause you can overclock them a little bit to 4.1 all core/4.3 light load single core which may help you wait it out a little longer if you need to.

  • 

    Hybroid on 12/04/2022 - 17:37

    3770K can run 4.6 GHz stable 24/7 no probs. I did for many many years.

    • 

      smashman42 on 12/04/2022 - 19:03

      +1

      They didn't specify the K version though - back then the non K ones could be overclocked so I mentioned that in case they were unaware

      Edit: to be clear, I own a non K 3770 and have successfully overclocked it as I described in my previous reply

      • 

        Hybroid on 12/04/2022 - 19:04

        Ah thought you were referring to 3770K. Didn't know non-K could be overclocked too.

        • 

          smashman42 on 12/04/2022 - 19:06

          @Hybroid: Sandy and Ivy Bridge can be for sure, not sure about Haswell but pretty sure they killed the option by Skylake.

  • 

    McOzbargainer on 12/04/2022 - 19:40

    I tried setting the multiplier to 43, I was able to do that on a friends similar system with a non k, but it's probably my b75 motherboard.

• 

  bazingaa on 12/04/2022 - 17:45

  This is my parts list. I am thinking of the CPU (therefore motherboard upgrade is required), RAM and maybe get a cheap ssd. Ryzen 5 5600X (some really good deals recently), 32GB of ram and a X570 motherboard

  Just get a B550M, more than enough. I got a B550M-DS3H for $84 [EBay deal] for 5600x (hitting ~4.85 GHz in single core) and more than happy with that. I upgraded from i5-2400, 16 GB, GTX1060 3GB similar to you. Don't forget to get a good cooler anyway if you are getting a 5600x. Mine was heating as hell and end up getting a Arctic 34 for $38 [EBay deal],

  • 

    McOzbargainer on 12/04/2022 - 17:58

    I'm thinking of getting multiple gen4 drives down the track when they get cheap, so X570 might be better?

    • 

      smashman42 on 12/04/2022 - 19:05

      +1

      if you really need multiple gen 4 drives then yes, that's the only real use case for X570 over B550

    • 

      avoidfullprice on 12/04/2022 - 22:51

      From a number of PC building YouTube videos, gaming you'll have better bang/$ with B550 instead of X570, which is for productivity work like… video editing

    • 

      freefall101 on 13/04/2022 - 09:49

      You’d be better off going intel then. Not many X570 boards out there with support for multiple gen4 drives.

• 

  the Unforgiven on 13/04/2022 - 19:53

  What did the reviews say about that mobo? r u going upgrade your GPU as well? PCCG still have that PowerColour Red Devil 6700XT OC for $929, which I am spewing on, as I bought it months earlier for a bit more than that. How old is your PSU? What brand & wattage is it?

  • 

    McOzbargainer on 14/04/2022 - 09:51

    PSU is fine atm, it's a Corsair 550W, I don't think I need to upgrade the gpu right now.