Should I upgrade my CPU?

SmugLilac · November 22, 2019

Currently running an i5-7600k at 4.5GHz, with a GTX 1070, and 16gb ram at 3200MHz. I've been considering upgrading to a Ryzen 3600 mainly for gaming, but then I also do the occasional stream, hop onto adobe premiere/photoshop/illustrator, or compress/decompress files (If I had to give a percentage for pc usage it would probably be something around 65% gaming and 35% workstation tasks). I am typically gaming at 1080p 144Hz, I play a plethora of different games (FPS, Moba, AAA, Indie).

What can I expect to see in terms of improvement towards gaming and also towards workstation performance? Would there be a night and day performance difference or would it be more like a 5% upgrade (or maybe even downgrade).

Typically when I'm gaming I want to have a youtube video or stream running in the background, but at 4c/4t I feel that my fps is greatly hindered by those background tasks. EG: I've been playing Destiny 2 recently and want to follow a video guide on how to obtain a certain item, so I launch up youtube on my 2nd monitor, set the playback speed to 2 and it crashes my game (Yes, I typically watch youtube videos on a playback speed of 2). Running around in Destiny I can hit above 144 fps but once I enter combat it dips down to 100 fps, and I don't mind this too much for PvE, but I've been playing a lot of PvP and my fps keeps jumping above and below my refresh rate when it really matters (I can really feel myself constantly hitting those 1% lows).

My cpu also seems to heavily be bottlenecking my pc nowadays, I've noticed in games like GTA V, MHW, Destiny 2, and PUBG my cpu will typically be at 100% usage and my GPU at 60%

I don't even know where to start with workstation tasks, typically for premiere my projects are 1080p, and it is a manageable experience. I tried a 4k project and it felt like setting my pc on fire.

TLDR: Would upgrading to a Ryzen 3600 from an i5-7600k be worthwhile for both gaming and workstation performance? and what improvements / compromises should I expect?

Mira Yurizaki · November 22, 2019

24 minutes ago, SmugLilac said:

What can I expect to see in terms of improvement towards gaming and also towards workstation performance? Would there be a night and day performance difference or would it be more like a 5% upgrade (or maybe even downgrade).

It depends on if the workload scales with more cores or not. Adobe should see an increase in performance for one.

For games, it depends on the game. More modern AAA developed titles will see at the very least an increase in minimum FPS or 99th percentile.

24 minutes ago, SmugLilac said:

Typically when I'm gaming I want to have a youtube video or stream running in the background, but at 4c/4t I feel that my fps is greatly hindered by those background tasks.

Video streaming tends to hit the GPU, not the CPU. Unless for some reason you disabled hardware acceleration on your browser.

24 minutes ago, SmugLilac said:

TLDR: Would upgrading to a Ryzen 3600 from an i5-7600k be worthwhile for both gaming and workstation performance? and what improvements / compromises should I expect?

Yes. You should see improvements across the board with almost no compromises. Though the only caveat is AMD recommends you use DDR4-3200 RAM. If you don't have that, then performance will suffer.