Wife loves ARK

[Solomon23]

My wife is loves to play ark, and I enjoy upgrading or tinkering with PC's. We're tight on money, but with black Friday approaching, and Christmas, I'm trying to help upgrade her pc. She's currently using a pre-built, with  an i5-7400, 16gb ram (highest speed I could use with her mobo), 1060 3gb graphics card. I just bought her a new cpu cooler and ssd, but I'm trying to figure out if upgrading the cpu will help as much as upgrading the gpu to either a 1660 or 570/580. She has two 1080p 60 mhz monitors with freesync. Should I upgrade the cpu? What are your opinions on the gpu?

[Kenpachi1985]

Can you find out what motherboard is in there? Also, knowing your PSU would be nice too, since its a prebuild it might not offer enough power for better hardware (or even might be bad anyway, cause brebuild).

[Fasauceome]

A 1660 would be a decent upgrade over a 1060 3GB, as for the CPU however, ARK isn't known for using lots of threads so an upgrade to an i7 7700 or something would not help much. However, for a small bump in performance, the i5 6600 can be had from ebay for a decent price and provides a nice bump in speed.

[Solomon23]

1 hour ago, Kenpachi1985 said:

Can you find out what motherboard is in there? Also, knowing your PSU would be nice too, since its a prebuild it might not offer enough power for better hardware (or even might be bad anyway, cause brebuild).

The psu is a thermaltake smart 600 w, and the mobo is a msi b250m bazooka 

[Kenpachi1985]

23 minutes ago, Solomon23 said:

The psu is a thermaltake smart 600 w, and the mobo is a msi b250m bazooka 

The PSU is not even 80+ bronze rated (only 80+ which is the bare minimum of it for not being completely trash), which is never a good sign. The motherboard is low end.

Knowing you don't have much of a budget, you should still be fine with the 1660 as a replacement for the 1060 3GB, as Fasa already said.

I would prefer it over a 570/580.

The 1660 draws around 65W LESS then a RX 580 while being noticeably stronger in performance, even though it has 6GB vs 8GB VRAM on the RX 580.

[Solomon23]

2 minutes ago, Kenpachi1985 said:

The PSU is not even 80+ bronze rated (only 80+ which is the bare minimum of it for not being completely trash), which is never a good sign. The motherboard is low end.

Knowing you don't have much of a budget, you should still be fine with the 1660 as a replacement for the 1060 3GB, as Fasa already said.

I would prefer it over a 570/580.

The 1660 draws around 65W LESS then a RX 580 while being noticeably stronger in performance, even though it has 6GB vs 8GB VRAM on the RX 580.

That's what I was thinking, thank you! From what I've read and watched, the 1660 seems like a really good fit for what she uses her pc for and what monitors she has. Thanks for the help!

[Solomon23]

1 hour ago, Fasauceome said:

A 1660 would be a decent upgrade over a 1060 3GB, as for the CPU however, ARK isn't known for using lots of threads so an upgrade to an i7 7700 or something would not help much. However, for a small bump in performance, the i5 6600 can be had from ebay for a decent price and provides a nice bump in speed.

Thank you! I'll check it out!

[Paul Rudd]

15 hours ago, Solomon23 said:

Should I upgrade the cpu? What are your opinions on the gpu?

No reason whatsoever to upgrade anything when gaming on a 60 Hz 1080p monitor with your current hardware. All a 1660 is going to be is 20% faster and allow you to bump up a few graphics settings since it's double the vram. My opinion on the 1060 3GB on a 60 Hz 1080p monitor is that it's a BEAST. I had an excellent gaming experience with it before I went to a 1440p 144 Hz monitor. Even in ARK. What you need to do if you haven't already is just customize the hell out of graphic settings. In fact, the 1060 3GB taught me a LOT when it comes to customizing graphic settings. You learn which settings hit vram and which settings don't. You learn which settings hit fps the most and which settings barely hit fps. You learn which settings affect visual fidelity the most and which settings barely even affect visual fidelity.

15 hours ago, Fasauceome said:

for a small bump in performance, the i5 6600 can be had from ebay for a decent price and provides a nice bump in speed.

0.3 GHz I wouldn't exactly consider to be a "nice" bump in speed. A small bump in performance you nailed though. And I mean really small.

[Fasauceome]

Just now, Intransigent said:

No reason whatsoever to upgrade anything when gaming on a 60 Hz 1080p monitor with your current hardware. All a 1660 is going to be is 20% faster and allow you to bump up a few graphics settings since it's double the vram. My opinion on the 1060 3GB on a 60 Hz 1080p monitor is that it's a BEAST. I had an excellent gaming experience with it before I went to a 1440p 144 Hz monitor.

0.3 GHz I wouldn't exactly consider to be a "nice" bump in speed. A small bump in performance you nailed though. And I mean really small.

I've found the 7400 to be right on the borderline of "decent" in a lot of cases, the 6600 just crosses that threshold. Pretty significant IMO (also .3GHz is almost a 12% increase which is not that small an increase)

[Paul Rudd]

2 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

Pretty significant IMO

We are all entitled to our own opinion. As well as our own gaming experiences.

2 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

also .3GHz is almost a 12% increase which is not that small an increase

It's small when it comes to gaming, especially ARK. Most games you'll probably get around a 4-11 fps boost. Just not worth the upgrade, imo.

[Zando_]

2 minutes ago, Intransigent said:

It's small when it comes to gaming, especially ARK. Most games you'll probably get around a 4-11 fps boost. Just not worth the upgrade, imo.

True, but that 4-11fps can sometimes matter. Again depends on the game and the fps you're pushing. But the difference between 49-56fps and a smooth 60 would be noticeable. If you're already pushing over 60 then it wouldn't be worth the upgrade unless it takes you to the next step, 75Hz, or higher (most monitors step up from 60 > 75 > 100 > 120 > 144 > > 155 > 165 > 240). Pushing the full refresh rate of your monitor usually makes for a noticeably nicer gaming experience. That said, if you're on 144Hz or higher then you don't usually notice fps drops unless they dip below 110 or so, unless you're quite sensitive. 

[Paul Rudd]

1 minute ago, Zando Bob said:

True, but that 4-11fps can sometimes matter. Again depends on the game and the fps you're pushing. But the difference between 49-56fps and a smooth 60 would be noticeable.

It won't matter in ARK on a 60 Hz 1080p monitor, it just won't. You can get a locked 60 in that game at 1080p with that hardware by simply using the art of customizing graphic settings. And I'm talking little to no loss in visual fidelity provided you devote time into each and every graphic setting.

7 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

If you're already pushing over 60 then it wouldn't be worth the upgrade unless it takes you to the next step, 75Hz, or higher (most monitors step up from 60 > 75 > 100 > 120 > 144 > > 155 > 165 > 240). Pushing the full refresh rate of your monitor usually makes for a noticeably nicer gaming experience. That said, if you're on 144Hz or higher then you don't usually notice fps drops unless they dip below 110 or so, unless you're quite sensitive. 

It's a 60 Hz, 1080p monitor. There won't be any pushing of its refresh rate.

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, Intransigent said:

It won't matter in ARK on a 60 Hz 1080p monitor, it just won't. You can get a locked 60 in that game at 1080p with that hardware by simply using the art of customizing graphic settings. And I'm talking little to no loss in visual fidelity provided you devote time into each and every graphic setting. 

Yep, you can do some crazy stuff if you mess with the settings. I got Battlefront 2015 to look decent while running at 1080p ultrawide on a GTX 660 with a stock X5650 (or it may have been a quad core, I forget), at a solid 60fps. 

3 minutes ago, Intransigent said:

It's a 60 Hz, 1080p monitor. There won't be any pushing of its refresh rate.

Yeah, I was just explaining how (in my experience) it's all worked. On a 60hz monitor you want to push an fps matching the full refresh rate of your monitor (so 60fps). That said I have had some 1080p monitors that happily OCed to 75Hz, and others that threw a fit at 61Hz. 

[Praesi]

Ark is anything but optimzed. I would play with settings and dont waste money on one Game.