CPU / GPU What to upgrade first ?

[InsufficientSleep]

Hi everyone.

 

It's time to upgrade again and I cant decide were to start.  Should I upgrade my CPU or GPU first?  

I mainly use my computer for gaming and occasionally some streaming.

I almost ordered a new GPU last night but thought I should check with you guys first to get a second ( or more ) opinion.

 

It stands between getting a 2080TI or the Ryzen 9 3900x

 

This is what I have today 

Mobo : x370 Asus ROG Crosshair VI Extreme 

CPU : Ryzen 7 1800x OC to 4.1 GHz 

GPU :  Asus ROG Strix Vega 64

Ram :  32Gb 3200MHz  G.Skill Trident Z Royal

PSU : Corsair HX850i

 

[Juular]

What's your budget ? You don't need Ryzen 9 for gaming, get R5 3600(X) and RTX2070\2080 Super.

[Bombastinator]

If you want to do just one the CPU market has recently updated whereas the GPU market is going to update in the near future.  It makes a certain amount of sense to do the CPU now and wait on the GPU market.

 

predicting the future is prone to lots of error though.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Juular said:

What's your budget ? You don't need Ryzen 9 for gaming, get R5 3600(X) and RTX2070\2080 Super.

The 1800 is an 8 core chip whereas the 3600 is a six core chip.  I doubt he’s going to want to reduce core count.

[Juular]

7 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The 1800 is an 8 core chip whereas the 3600 is a six core chip.  I doubt he’s going to want to reduce core count.

R7 1800 has 20% lower ST performance also which is what games need, no current game benefits from more threads than R5 3600 has, it's only ST performance that matters at this point and despite R9 3900 does have a bit higher ST performance, the price difference doesn't worth it at all, get Intel i9 9700k\9900k instead if you really want to spend so much money.

[Princess Luna]

8 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The 1800 is an 8 core chip whereas the 3600 is a six core chip.  I doubt he’s going to want to reduce core count.

An ideal R5 3600 configuration can actually give the same multi-threaded performance of a R7 1800X thanks to the significantly stronger single thread performance it has.

 

If OP only wants to game the R5 3600 suffices, the R7 3700X  really won't bring anything to the table here and would only be required if OP does more extensive work with the computer.

 

As is I also believe the best way here would be get the R5 3600 for the gaming performance bump in order not to bottleneck the RTX 2080 Ti too badly, I believe the 180$ of it is very justifiable since the R7 1800X won't keep up well enough.

[Bombastinator]

11 minutes ago, Juular said:

R7 1800 has 20% lower ST performance also which is what games need, no current game benefits from more threads than R5 3600 has, it's only ST performance that matters at this point and despite R9 3900 does have a bit higher ST performance, the price difference doesn't worth it at all, get Intel i9 9700k\9900k instead if you really want to spend so much money.

Re: ST performance.  I have heard that this has been changing.  Many games are no longer ST.

I don’t know if your data is old or my data is wrong.

[Juular]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

Re: ST performance.  I have heard that this has been changing.  Many games are no longer ST.

I don’t know if your data is old or my data is wrong.

When two CPUs with enough threads to not have 100% CPU load have different ST performance, the one with higher ST performance will perform better duh. This logic doens't apply here, remember Bulldozers with shitton of threads, they're not a good gaming CPUs just because they have terrible ST performance.

[Bombastinator]

44 minutes ago, Juular said:

R7 1800 has 20% lower ST performance also which is what games need, no current game benefits from more threads than R5 3600 has, it's only ST performance that matters at this point and despite R9 3900 does have a bit higher ST performance, the price difference doesn't worth it at all, get Intel i9 9700k\9900k instead if you really want to spend so much money.

It’s a better solution for the money sure, but look at the GPU.  That is Isn’t exactly a “budget” choice.  That’s “damn the torpedos full speed ahead”  I’m perhaps assuming that budgeting isn’t the primary goal here.

[Juular]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

It’s a better solution for the money sure, but look at the GPU.  That is Isn’t exactly a “budget” choice.  That’s “damn the torpedos full speed ahead”  I’m perhaps assuming that budgeting isn’t the primary goal here.

Sure, go for Intel then, i9 9900k will get you way better ST performance for the price than Ryzen 7\9, it doesn't affect all games but the difference will be noticeable. But i still advice to go for R5 3600 and wait for Zen 3\4, they'll most likely be on par with Intel in that but that's just the choice on whether to get the best possible performance now (i9 9900k) or wait a year for possibly even bit better perormance (Zen 3).

[Bombastinator]

42 minutes ago, Juular said:

When two CPUs with enough threads to not have 100% CPU load have different ST performance, the one with higher ST performance will perform better duh. This logic doens't apply here, remember Bulldozers with shitton of threads, they're not a good gaming CPUs just because they have terrible ST performance.

So we’re talking about slightly different things though we actually agree.  Definition of the term “single thread” 

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, Juular said:

Sure, go for Intel then, i9 9900k will get you way better ST performance for the price than Ryzen 7\9, it doesn't affect all games but the difference will be noticeable. But i still advice to go for R5 3600 and wait for Zen 3\4, they'll most likely be on par with Intel in that but that's just the choice on whether to get the best possible performance now (i9 9900k) or wait a year for possibly even bit better perormance (Zen 3).

Zen 3 I understand might very well have a motherboard change from am4, making things difficult.  Kinda defeats the purpose of the upgrade now bit if it just has to be done again later anyway.

The “money is no object” choice atm is the Ryzen 3950x iirc.  It has better single thread performance than the intel stuff and it’s got more cores to boot.  Pricey though.
 

I don’t know exactly what criteria the OP was using to make his choices.  I just accepted them.

There’s likely cost, cost performance, futureproofing, and possibly a bunch of other stuff.  Maybe even just not liking intel.  Not my business.

 

The question was CPU or GPU if these were the two choices.

[Juular]

21 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Zen 3 I understand might very well have a motherboard change from am4, making things difficult.

Well, nothing confirmed but i think AMD have said at one time that AM4 will live up to 2020 at least, that's at least Zen 3 and quite possibly Zen 4 also, then DDR5 comes and it makes sense to make a new socket.

[Bombastinator]

17 minutes ago, Juular said:

Well, nothing confirmed but i think AMD have said at one time that AM4 will live up to 2020 at least, that's at least Zen 3 and quite possibly Zen 4 also, then DDR5 comes and it makes sense to make a new socket.

“Up to 2020” is a month away though.

[Juular]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

“Up to 2020” is a month away though.

Depends on the definition of 'up to', it may be up to the start or the end of 2020. We'll see anyway, Zen 3 announce should be at CES 2020 just in a month.

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, Juular said:

Depends on the definition of 'up to', it may be up to the start or the end of 2020. We'll see anyway, Zen 3 announce should be at CES 2020 just in a month.

Yeah.  It’s vague.

[InsufficientSleep]

Thanks everyone.  So CPU first then .