What should I upgrade?

[Alexskalski]

Hello. With the holiday season and Black Friday coming up, I am looking to upgrade my rig. Currently I have an i5 6600k running at 4.9 ghz and a vega 64. I am looking to upgrade either my graphics card to a RTX 2070 Super, but I am concerned about creating a bottleneck with the cpu. I have about $300-$350 to spend, so I could either sell my Vega 64 and purchase a RTX card or sell my current cpu/mobo and upgrade my cpu to something like a 9600k, 9700k or a 3700x. Please advise. Thank you

[Slottr]

Move to a 3600 on a b450 tomahawk

[Bombastinator]

It’s just a feeling, not even an actual thought, but buy a six month CD with the money.  A Vega 64 is a lot of card, and 4.9 ghz with 8 threads is about as good as it gets for gaming still.  That AMD mobo swap will give you more threads but fewer ghz.  I’d call it a side grade

 

.  I have wobbles in my tummy about what the release of the new consoles will bring.  Maybe nothing, maybe a major change.  You might be crying for a storage or GPU change around then.

[Jurrunio]

Vega64 is still relevant, it can stay unless you got one with bad cooling and you're fed up with the noise.

 

As for CPU and board, R5 3600 + B450 makes the most sense. MSI ATX boards can flash their BIOS without needing a CPU to gain 3rd gen compatiblity so give them higher priority, unless you deicde to get X570 because you've got money for more cores or plan to do work that benefits from more cores.

 

4 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

4.9 ghz with 16 threads

Get your phone back to the right orientation, it's 6600k, not 9900k

[Bombastinator]

The 16 thread thing was a typo I corrected immediately.

 

I know.  Look at the actual real world performance increase. of the 6600k@4.9ghz (that last bit is important)  vs. a 9900k.  It’s just not that much.  The problem is while you CAN overclock a 9900k, you can’t actually overclock it very far.  Plus a 9900k and the mobo and ram he would need is out of his stated price range.  
the stated option was a 3600 which needs new ram and mobo.  They’re “unlocked” but they do this auto overclock thing and it’s built into their states spec.  Sometimes they don’t even reach their stated spec at all.

The theoretical performance limit of silicon is around 5ghz.  CPUs are having the same problem phone wire modems did back in the 90’s.  They’ve been having it for a while now. I’ve got a ridiculously old 3770k z97 system that won’t overclock for beans (I get a measly 4ghz).  I’ve  upgraded the GPU on it twice and it’s still bottlenecks on a lot of games.  I could open that bottleneck finally with a brand new GPU, but that kind of power has only become available in the mid range recently.  Is a brand new system faster? Yes.  But it’s not that much USEFULLY faster.  There’s a non zero chance that hardware raytracing or some sort of really fast storage might become a critical thing summer/fall of 2020.  A 2070 super is barely faster than what he has now and he’s got to dig deep to do it.

[NumLock21]

Black Friday with them good deals, does not mean to spend money on upgrade when you don't really have to.

[Jurrunio]

24 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The 16 thread thing was a typo I corrected immediately.

46 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

4.9 ghz with 8 threads

Even that has not gone well since the Skylake i5 only has 4 threads.

 

24 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

 It’s just not that much

Double the core count and hyperthreading is "not that much"? This isn't a CSGO (essentially a 10+ year old game) machine, it's meant to play pretty much anything he wants (varying settings between games of course), and modern games scale from 4 core 8 thread all the way up to 8 core 16 thread. Heck even overwatch, a game with no NPCs, scale with 4 cores well and you need 4 cores to play at high frame rates with them. Also even if average frame rates look good, frame rate stability (by looking at frametime graphs or 1%/0.1% lows) is hampered when you dont have that many cores. Not even a subjective thing, these are objective data.

 

24 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

They’re “unlocked” but they do this auto overclock thing and it’s built into their states spec.  Sometimes they don’t even reach their stated spec at all.

Even at stock, 3600 will shove, drill, crush and lift (get that? Bulldozer, piledriver, steamroller and excavator?) the 6600k out of the way.

 

24 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I’ve  upgraded the GPU

what exactly, 550ti to 750ti to 1050ti?

 

I have a 2600k btw so this argument won't stop so easily

[Bombastinator]

9 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Even that has not gone well since the Skylake i5 only has 4 threads.

 

Double the core count and hyperthreading is "not that much"? This isn't a CSGO (essentially a 10+ year old game) machine, it's meant to play pretty much anything he wants (varying settings between games of course), and modern games scale from 4 core 8 thread all the way up to 8 core 16 thread. Heck even overwatch, a game with no NPCs, scale with 4 cores well and you need 4 cores to play at high frame rates with them. Also even if average frame rates look good, frame rate stability (by looking at frametime graphs or 1%/0.1% lows) is hampered when you dont have that many cores. Not even a subjective thing, these are objective data.

 

Even at stock, 3600 will shove, drill, crush and lift (get that? Bulldozer, piledriver, steamroller and excavator?) the 6600k out of the way.

 

what exactly, 550ti to 750ti to 1050ti?

 

I have a 2600k btw so this argument won't stop so easily

Mmm.  Thought it had hyperthreading.  There may be a point then.  A CPU/motherboard/ram upgrade will be needed regardless of what happens in 2020

 

Close. 470-I forget-970.  I need more video card.  I looked real hard at a 5700xt which is too much card by a bit but was planning to swap it to a whole new rig summer/fall 2020.  The problem is I’m not 100% convinced navi10 will even be viable then.

[Alexskalski]

9 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

Vega64 is still relevant, it can stay unless you got one with bad cooling and you're fed up with the noise.

 

As for CPU and board, R5 3600 + B450 makes the most sense. MSI ATX boards can flash their BIOS without needing a CPU to gain 3rd gen compatiblity so give them higher priority, unless you deicde to get X570 because you've got money for more cores or plan to do work that benefits from more cores.

 

Get your phone back to the right orientation, it's 6600k, not 9900k

Not a bad idea. I like the 3600 approach. I would probably opt for a new memory kit because mine is well, good for ddr4 launch standards.