Need Advice - GPU & CPU Related

[Kastun]

I'm looking into upgrading my current system and wanted advice on the upgrades. I'm looking to upgrade the GPU from a 1060 to a 2070 Super and not sure if I should upgrade the CPU as well. I'm currently on a X470 Mobo with a 1700x. I will mostly be gaming and some streaming with very light video editing and encoding. Any advice is welcomed.

[ChaoticChaosx]

If you can afford it then yes. It's about an 17% bottleneck by CPU or just go for a 2060 super.

[Kastun]

I'm working with a $650 budget for upgrades. What CPU would you recommend. 

[Kastun]

10 minutes ago, ChaosCGTV said:

If you can afford it then yes. It's about an 17% bottleneck by CPU or just go for a 2060 super.

I'm working with a $650 possibly $700 budget for upgrades. What CPU would you recommend.

[ChaoticChaosx]

11 minutes ago, Kastun said:

I'm working with a $650 possibly $700 budget for upgrades. What CPU would you recommend.

3600/x or 3700/x I believe there would be no bottleneck then.

[boey]

26 minutes ago, ChaosCGTV said:

If you can afford it then yes. It's about an 17% bottleneck by CPU or just go for a 2060 super.

Bottleneck percentage calculators are complete bullshit, please don't use them.

 

Why are they useless? Here's an example:

 

Let's say you have a Ryzen 9 and a GTX 1650. In regular gaming situations, there will probably be a bottleneck(weak GPU for gaming, strong CPU for gaming). But, some games are heavily CPU bound(ie. CS:GO), there probably won't be a bottleneck.

 

Point is, a bottleneck is always present. Level of bottleneck always depends on the task. A "17% bottleneck" in one program, could be a lot more in another program that depends more on a weaker part, or a lot less.

 

34 minutes ago, Kastun said:

I'm looking into upgrading my current system and wanted advice on the upgrades. I'm looking to upgrade the GPU from a 1060 to a 2070 Super and not sure if I should upgrade the CPU as well. I'm currently on a X470 Mobo with a 1700x. I will mostly be gaming and some streaming with very light video editing and encoding. Any advice is welcomed.

1700x will do fine, 8 cores will be nice with your specified workloads. There are definitely better choices(Ryzen 1000 has quite bad frequency and single core performance), but the price for upgrading is not worth it. GPU upgrade is good. Save your money and wait for Ryzen 4000, that would probably be quite worth it for an upgrade(unless you are happy with performance). AMD promised AM4 compatibility till 2020, and you have a X-series board so they should be compatible with a BIOS update.

[ephesus.exe]

You can only upgrade to the RTX 2070S and get away with it. You can dramatically decrease the bottleneck by underclocking the GPU, or overcloking the CPU(which i wouldn't recommend, since Ryzens come with their clocks maximized to the optimal level.) The combination is OK overall. 

[PyroTheWise]

14 minutes ago, Kastun said:

I'm working with a $650 possibly $700 budget for upgrades. What CPU would you recommend.

You could do a 2070 Super + Ryzen 5 3600 at 700 bucks USD. 

[boey]

3 minutes ago, ephesus.exe said:

You can only upgrade to the RTX 2070S and get away with it. You can dramatically decrease the bottleneck by underclocking the GPU, or overcloking the CPU(which i wouldn't recommend, since Ryzens come with their clocks maximized to the optimal level.) The combination is OK overall. 

Best thing to increase Ryzen performance is to get dual channel RAM at >=3000MHz

[boey]

4 minutes ago, PyroTheWise said:

You could do a 2070 Super + Ryzen 5 3600 at 700 bucks USD. 

This is a good choice, but like @ephesus.exesaid you can get away with saving money and not upgrading CPU. Although 3600 has less cores than 1700x the increase in IPC and frequency results in a higher multi-core performance

[PyroTheWise]

 

1 minute ago, boey said:

6 minutes ago, PyroTheWise said:

You could do a 2070 Super + Ryzen 5 3600 at 700 bucks USD. 

This is a good choice, but like @ephesus.exesaid you can get away with saving money and not upgrading CPU. 

 

yes, very true.  There are lots of options at he price point for upgrades the OP posted.   I do have one question though:

4 minutes ago, boey said:

Best thing to increase Ryzen performance is to get dual channel RAM at >=3000MHz

Isn't the Ryzen 1700x max speed limited to 2667MHZ.   So any memory bought above that speed will be slowed down to match?  

 

That is a good point though.  The op didn't specify the memory installed (speed/amount).  So buying a 3600 might require a memory upgrade as well to really optimize performance which would be a tight fit for 700 USD.

[boey]

1 minute ago, PyroTheWise said:

 

 

yes, very true.  There are lots of options at he price point for upgrades the OP posted.   I do have one question though:

Isn't the Ryzen 1700x max speed limited to 2667MHZ.   So any memory bought above that speed will be slowed down to match?  

 

That is a good point though.  The op didn't specify the memory installed (speed/amount).  So buying a 3600 might require a memory upgrade as well to really optimize performance which would be a tight fit for 700 USD.

If I'm not wrong that's just the officially supported speed but the motherboard doesn't lock RAM speed, like B or H series motherboards on Intel platform. I think there are problems with 3200MHz and above with Ryzen 1000(don't know if these are fixed), but 3000Mhz seems to be a good spot. Also, tightening RAM timings is quite important, lowers RAM latency by quite a lot.

 

There's an idiot-proof tutorial on how to do this without any trial and error.

 

[ephesus.exe]

21 minutes ago, boey said:

Best thing to increase Ryzen performance is to get dual channel RAM at >=3000MHz

thanks, i forgot that. i forgot that so well, i have 2x 2666 sticks in my system. lol

[boey]

11 minutes ago, ephesus.exe said:

thanks, i forgot that. i forgot that so well, i have 2x 2666 sticks in my system. lol

2666 is actually ok with ryzen as long as your ram timings are good, follow this tutorial and that's the easiest way to decrease ram latency. 

 

23 minutes ago, boey said:

If I'm not wrong that's just the officially supported speed but the motherboard doesn't lock RAM speed, like B or H series motherboards on Intel platform. I think there are problems with 3200MHz and above with Ryzen 1000(don't know if these are fixed), but 3000Mhz seems to be a good spot. Also, tightening RAM timings is quite important, lowers RAM latency by quite a lot.

 

There's an idiot-proof tutorial on how to do this without any trial and error.

 

 

[ephesus.exe]

Just now, boey said:

2666 is actually ok with ryzen as long as your ram timings are good, follow this tutorial and that's the easiest way to decrease ram latency. 

 

 

thanks, i hope i get  good results.

[Kastun]

1 hour ago, boey said:

Best thing to increase Ryzen performance is to get dual channel RAM at >=3000MHz

My RAM is currently clocked at 3000MHz.

[Kastun]

3 minutes ago, Kastun said:

My RAM is currently clocked at 3000MHz and I believe that it is CL 16

 

[Kastun]

My Specs are:

Asus ROG STRIX X470

G.SKILL Ripjaw V 2x8GB 3000MHz

Ryzen 7 1700x

Gtx 1060 3GB

Be Quiet! 750W Gold cert PSU

 

I plan to upgrade the stock cooler to something better and am not currently planning to OC the CPU or GPU. I don't have a need to OC at the moment and don't want to ruin my parts doing it myself.

 

[boey]

15 hours ago, Kastun said:

 

Stock cooler is fine(unless very high ambient temperatures or bad airflow in case) OC is not needed at this point too.

 

Would recommend tightening ram timings, takes like 10 minutes max not including the time taken to watch the tutorial.

16 hours ago, boey said: