What to upgrade?

[Caleb SF]

I built my PC back in 2014 at the end of high school (yikes). At the time, it was a pretty solid build, but cost ~$1400. The CPU is currently OC'd at 4.2GHz, the GPU is not. I suspect that overtime, games have become more and more demanding and my system seems to be running worse and worse. I did reformat and completely reinstall Windows 10 about 2 years ago. I was wondering if it is worth it to upgrade my system or just start over.

 

My Build

 

If Upgrading:

What should i actually upgrade? I heard that the i5-4690k should still be very relevant in today's games, but if not, I'm a fan of Ryzen. GPU wise, I feel like this is my biggest flaw at the moment. The r9 290 is still decent, but I think it's past its lifetime. The RAM is also a concern, it was never a great option in my opinion.

 

If Starting New:

I don't have a budget at the moment, but if I were to buy a new system, I would want it to be budget oriented. I still want to get the best performance for 1080p - 1440p gaming on high - ultra. I'm an AMD fan and would definitely consider Ryzen. However, I think Nvidia may make better cards for budget builds.

 

What do you guys think? I was never great at choosing the best parts!

Thanks!

 

 

[ImAlsoRan]

I recently upgraded to an i5-4460, and learned that my gaming bottleneck was actually my GPU. I recommend a 1050 TI or 1060. Your RAM is fine, just also invest in an SSD.

 

But start saving up for a gaming PC for the future, because with the way games are moving to ray-tracing, the i5 and DDR3 RAM may not be able to keep up, even if you get an RTX card.

[Caleb SF]

2 minutes ago, ImAlsoRan said:

I recently upgraded to an i5-4460, and learned that my gaming bottleneck was actually my GPU. I recommend a 1050 TI or 1060. Your RAM is fine, just also invest in an SSD.

 

But start saving up for a gaming PC for the future, because with the way games are moving to ray-tracing, the i5 and DDR3 RAM may not be able to keep up, even if you get an RTX card.

I did buy a ssd for a boot drive, but thats the only thing I've put on it. And currently, the RTX cards are not a good enough value and I don't think I'll touch those for a while. Is the 1050ti and 1060 really that big of an upgrade from the r9 290?

 

R9 290 vs 1050ti

[tryingmybest]

AMD definitely make better budget cards. But then again you haven't defined budget... their freesync is also cheaper (but apparently nvidia also supports that now!?). AMD's improved performance in graphics is their low-level APIs and hence are v. good for vulkan.

Ryzen is definitely cheaper again and with the 3000 series coming they are definitely a strong contender. However if this is games orientated I would recommend an intel chip - yours seems fine - as although games are often more multithreaded they don't use 8 cores!

[Caleb SF]

6 minutes ago, tryingmybest said:

AMD definitely make better budget cards. But then again you haven't defined budget... their freesync is also cheaper (but apparently nvidia also supports that now!?). AMD's improved performance in graphics is their low-level APIs and hence are v. good for vulkan.

Ryzen is definitely cheaper again and with the 3000 series coming they are definitely a strong contender. However if this is games orientated I would recommend an intel chip - yours seems fine - as although games are often more multithreaded they don't use 8 cores!

So is my main issue the GPU? What would you recommend upgrading to?

[tryingmybest]

8 minutes ago, Caleb SF said:

So is my main issue the GPU? What would you recommend upgrading to?

I would say that if you're playing on ULTRA HIGH that would be a hinderance, yes. Then again unless there is a crazy ton of physics simulations (which there shouldn't) your cpu won't struggle. Is your cooling okay though? Ram is tricky... it should be fine if you've got enough and it's not using a swap file. I've heard optane is good for game drives but then again I don't have much (any) experience with it.

[Firewrath9]

37 minutes ago, Caleb SF said:

I did buy a ssd for a boot drive, but thats the only thing I've put on it. And currently, the RTX cards are not a good enough value and I don't think I'll touch those for a while. Is the 1050ti and 1060 really that big of an upgrade from the r9 290?

 

R9 290 vs 1050ti

NO. A RX 580 ~ a R9 290 ~ 1060.

If you were to upgrade, vega/RTX 2060 would be the minimum imo.

[tryingmybest]

10 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

NO. A RX 580 ~ a R9 290 ~ 1060.

If you were to upgrade, vega/RTX 2060 would be the minimum imo.

2060!? why not 1080 or other?

[Firewrath9]

16 minutes ago, tryingmybest said:

2060!? why not 1080 or other?

becuase the cheapest 1080 is 100$ more than 2060 FE, cheapest 1070 ti is 20$ more, and a 1070 for 20$ less is less value. Im not a fan of turing, but its the only option.

[Caleb SF]

4 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

becuase the cheapest 1080 is 100$ more than 2060 FE, cheapest 1070 ti is 20$ more, and a 1070 for 20$ less is less value. Im not a fan of turing, but its the only option.

This is going to sound dumb, but is a pre-owned 1080 going to be worse than a new 2060? I know on ebay a 1080 goes for around $300-400

[Firewrath9]

2 minutes ago, Caleb SF said:

This is going to sound dumb, but is a pre-owned 1080 going to be worse than a new 2060? I know on ebay a 1080 goes for around $300-400

you never mentioned used, I was talking about new market. If you are going, used, try not to get a mining card, or try to get a card with warranty (EVGA cards, there are others.) make sure they dont have a mining bios

[Caleb SF]

4 hours ago, Firewrath9 said:

you never mentioned used, I was talking about new market. If you are going, used, try not to get a mining card, or try to get a card with warranty (EVGA cards, there are others.) make sure they dont have a mining bios

Not sure how I could tell if a card was used for mining. Especially the bios. Most ebay sellers are pretty secretive it seems. And honestly a new 2060 isn't too bad, I'd happily buy it for $300. How do they compare though to a 1070?

[tryingmybest]

4 hours ago, Caleb SF said:

Not sure how I could tell if a card was used for mining. Especially the bios. Most ebay sellers are pretty secretive it seems. And honestly a new 2060 isn't too bad, I'd happily buy it for $300. How do they compare though to a 1070?

according to userbenchmark it performs better by 10% but a 1070ti beats it by 7%.

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-RTX-2060-6GB-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1070-Ti/4034vs3943

If you have RTX on it would be much worse i've heard.

also it's probably better to find actual test benches done by people like ltt.

[Firewrath9]

15 hours ago, Caleb SF said:

Not sure how I could tell if a card was used for mining. Especially the bios. Most ebay sellers are pretty secretive it seems. And honestly a new 2060 isn't too bad, I'd happily buy it for $300. How do they compare though to a 1070?

you can always ask, and a 2060 is basically a 1070 ti, they cost 350$ new. 

also, if they show like 10 gpus in a pic, then its definitly mining.

[Caleb SF]

1 hour ago, Firewrath9 said:

you can always ask, and a 2060 is basically a 1070 ti, they cost 350$ new. 

also, if they show like 10 gpus in a pic, then its definitly mining.

Yeah, there aren't any 2060's on ebay really and I'll keep looking at ebay for 1080's and maybe 1070's. Although, for a new 2060 at $350, it doesn't seem that bad of a deal