I posted something similar earlier, but as somebody who’s got an i5 6600k (@4.5GHz) and was just in that same dilemma a few days ago. I can assure you that a new video card is the way to go if you want higher frame rates and be able to max out the game settings.
The i5 6600K and your 7600K’s are starting to show their age in certain games due to lack of cores, so don’t expect to score the same on benchmarks as people with better CPU’s. But as far as gaming goes, the difference won’t be that noticeable to the eye. Even on CPU heavy games, yes it probably limits my FPS a bit (10 to 30 FPS or something like that compared to the newer stuff), but you’ll still be getting a smooth 100+ FPS experience so who cares. And the higher the resolution, the less the CPU impacts frames compared to the better CPU’s.
Going from a GtX 970 to a 2060s more or less doubled my frame rate and allowed me to go from medium/high settings to maxing out every game.
Oh and if your CPU isn’t overclocked, you might want to consider doing so. It’s essentially a free boost in performance and those chips can handle quite a bit. Just going from stock speed to like 4.5 or 4.6GHz will probably boost your FPS close to 10 frames (or more) in most games
With that CPU and GPU combination I think you’ll be just fine. It’ll be a night and day upgrade from that GTX 960. I was in the same boat just a few days ago because I am still on an i5 6600 K (oc’d to 4.5Ghz) and I wanted to upgrade my GTX 970 to a RTX 2070 or a 2060Super. Bottleneck calculators were telling me that I would get about a 40% bottleneck with those cards from my CPU and that got me worried that I would have to upgrade my CPU (or my mobo/cpu) if I wanted to go with those cards, anyways I decided to order the 2060Super and take a chance and I’m so glad I did because it literally doubled my FPS in every game I threw at it and that’s with much higher graphical settings than I used before. Am I missing out on 15 or 20fps from having a weaker CPU? Yes, but when you’re getting 100FPS on ultra settings you won’t miss the extra 20FPS you could be getting.
Oh and considering that your 8600K is a six core CPU, buddy you’re laughing!
Blazzin_0ne got a reaction from Simon Tkac in Which first, GPU or CPU?
Blazzin_0ne got a reaction from Mufflen in RTX 2070's and Bottlenecking
