i7-4770k: Squeeze it or Upgrade It?

[ShiningLizard]

Budget (including currency): £800

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Gaming. Most demanding game I am playing currently is probably Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Also playing Soul Calibur 6, Monster Hunter World, Divinity: Original Sin 2 and CS:GO. I was thinking of playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey if it will work well on my PC, and maybe Valhalla when it comes out.

Other details Current system: i7-4700k (stock speeds); Gigabyte Z87-D3HP mobo; 16GB DDR3 @ 1866MHz; GTX 1050 Ti 4GB; 250GB Samsung Evo 840 SSD for OS and Crucial MX500 1TB SSD for my games; Corsair CP-9020048-UK CX600 ATX 80 PLUS Bronze PSU; Riotoro CR1088 compact ATX case. CPU/RAM/Mobo/PSU was assembled in 2013; upgraded the GPU in November 2018 and added the 1TB SSD last year.

 

Since the core of this PC is quite a few years old I have been thinking of upgrading for the past year, probably to a Ryzen 5 3600 build with an RX 5700 GPU (I cheaped out on my current GPU and I'm regretting it!). I'd love to run Kingdom Come at 60Fps or above (currently runs at around 35-40FPS on High settings and not much better on Medium). However, this rig has honestly been problem free since I've had it and I've reluctant to upgrade just because I can - I don't want to waste it. Would throwing an RX 5700 in this right now be worth it, with a view to upgrading to Ryzen at the end of the year when new CPUs come out? Bottleneck Calculator reckons I'd experience a 20% bottleneck with an RX 5700 in my current build.

Currently CPU is at stock speeds but would be willing to consider overclocking (never done it before) and buying a new cooler (maybe a Dark Rock 4?)

 

[ki8aras]

bottleneck calculators are not to be trusted, you could overclock your cpu for the meantime and wait until the new rtx gpus come out later this year

[Dravinian]

Bit worried about a PSU that is 7 years old, might be time to upgrade that too...

 

I added a PSU, it is £8 over budget...I will say, I think we are scrimping on RAM here, but that is an easy upgrade path later on.

If your case is ATX, then I think this is in budget and gives one of the best RT 5700 XT GPUs, and a decent CPU upgrade.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor	£155.50 @ AWD-IT
Motherboard	MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard	£108.50 @ AWD-IT
Memory	Crucial Ballistix 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory	£69.98 @ Amazon UK
Video Card	Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB PULSE Video Card	£409.99 @ CCL Computers
Power Supply	be quiet! System Power 9 600 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	£64.38 @ Aria PC
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	£808.35
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-05 09:43 BST+0100

 

[Ajukrezi]

no reason not to overclock it. else why get the K version

iam not to much into the AMD GPU, but the 1050 is definently slower than your CPU.

 

there are plenty guides to help you OC, a bit more voltage keep an eye out for temps and raise the multiplier. no reason to mess with blck and such

 

personally iam running a i7-2700k and a GTX 1070, and its a okay match when CPU is overclocked.
until they make more games (which will come) that use multicore better than one is fine for gaming.

[Xkillerpn]

Keep cpu for now. Get it overclock a bit and get a 5700xt.

 

It will bottleneck the gpu if at 1080p, just crank the grafics up and enjoy.

[Dravinian]

2 minutes ago, Ajukrezi said:

no reason not to overclock it. else why get the K version

iam not to much into the AMD GPU, but the 1050 is definently slower than your CPU.

 

there are plenty guides to help you OC, a bit more voltage keep an eye out for temps and raise the multiplier. no reason to mess with blck and such

 

personally iam running a i7-2700k and a GTX 1070, and its a okay match when CPU is overclocked.
until they make more games (which will come) that use multicore better than one is fine for gaming.

Easy way to find out if this will work for you.

 

Get MSI afterburner, go into settings and go to "Monitoring" tab, click on GPU usage, and CPU usage and tick the box lower down that says "Show in On-Screen Display".

Play a game you like.

 

If your CPU is pegged at 100% and your GPU is at 50% then you are bottlenecking because of your CPU and overclocking will likely see an improvement.  You can use Intels Extreme Overclocking utility, which you can download for free, which may make you feel more comfortable about overclocking...I mean, if Intel provide it, surely they expect you to use it?

 

If the on screen display shows that your GPU is pegged or near pegged, then overclocking won't really help that much because your GPU is not being held back by your CPU.

[Dravinian]

I don't think CPU bottle neck is your problem.

 

I run an i7-4790k, I do have all cores synced at 4.4k which is a slight overclock, but my CPU runs at 70-75% while running SOTR bench mark, while both my GTX 970s in SLI are pinned at 100% (or near enough).

 

And bear in mind, my GTX 970 is ranked higher than the 1050 ti, and I have two of them in SLI, both of which are pinned.

 

It seems unlikely that your single 1050 ti is being 'held back' by your i7 4700k

[porina]

I agree with Dravinian, check the system usage (CPU, GPU) while running games to see where the limit is. I'd guess it is the GPU so that would benefit from an upgrade first, but it depends also on graphical settings and output resolution. I would caution depending on the game, even if it is CPU bottlenecked the CPU might not indicate 100% usage if the game itself doesn't scale that well. So I'd go more with if GPU is on 100%, you're GPU limited and it'll benefit from an upgrade.

[SkilledRebuilds]

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5ofzFlQXfuEzZPqehBFJnwAXVtiueF06

Performance of .....4790K 4.6Ghz, 1866Mhz at 2200Mhz, GTX1070 (Half of a 5700XT)

 

Many Titles in this playlist, mostly with MSI Afterburner overlays for Data extraction.

 

Being GPU usage, CPU Usage, All the typicals..

The 5700XT being quite powerful is the concern as you probably will lose some gpu usage in 1080p as its a 1440p based GPU.

 

But I'd squeeze and then consider options.

All depends how sensitive you are to frame drops at the milliseconds level..

For the most part in many many titles my GPU is the bottleneck.

 

Its fast, hasn't got a "lot" of cores.

I'd say Kingdom Come Deliverance is a heavier CPU title (forum?)

[Dravinian]

You have a difficult choice really, because your budget is £800, which means you could buy a 2080 Super.

 

But if that doesn't work, and you do need to ugprade CPU/MB then you do not have the budget to do it.

 

If you buy a Sapphire Pulse to test, that is half your budget and if that fixes the problem, you will be asking yourself whether you should have got a better GPU now while you had the money.

 

If I were in your shoes, I think I would want to do a lot of testing, and a lot of watching of benchmarks, just to see exactly where best to spend the money.

 

Bearing in mind, if you can eek out a couple more years on what you have, then new GPUs, both from Nvidia and AMD are expected, new CPUs are in the pipeline, Intel 10th gen are out, we are expecting AMD CPUs sometime early next year.

 

And while you might not be able to afford 'bleeding edge' so might think it less relevant, the price of the previous generation will drop, and it may be significant, and put things in your budget that are well outside of your budget right now.

[kyn1972]

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor	£155.50 @ AWD-IT
Motherboard	MSI B450I GAMING PLUS AC Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard	£119.98 @ CCL Computers
Memory	Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory	£69.98 @ Amazon UK
Storage	Sabrent Rocket 256 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	£46.99 @ Amazon UK
Storage	Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	£53.50 @ AWD-IT
Video Card	Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6 GB OC Video Card	£219.99 @ CCL Computers
Case	Phanteks P300 ATX Mid Tower Case	£53.46 @ Ebuyer
Power Supply	EVGA BR 600 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	£71.40 @ Alza
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	£790.80
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-05 10:40 BST+0100

 

Another option is to reuse your current case and put the money towards a slightly better video card like this

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor	£155.50 @ AWD-IT
Motherboard	MSI B450I GAMING PLUS AC Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard	£119.98 @ CCL Computers
Memory	Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory	£69.98 @ Amazon UK
Storage	Sabrent Rocket 256 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	£46.99 @ Amazon UK
Storage	Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	£53.50 @ AWD-IT
Video Card	MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6 GB VENTUS XS OC Video Card	£289.74 @ CCL Computers
Power Supply	EVGA BR 600 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	£71.40 @ Alza
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	£807.09
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-05 10:48 BST+0100

 

[ShiningLizard]

Thank you guys for all the recommendations. I am leaning towards getting a new GPU first and seeing how it copes with my current system..  I was planning on buying the parts a few at a time to spread out the cost, too.

 

With the mobo recommendations, I see that they are all B450 variants... Is it not worth going for an X570 so I get PCIe v4 support, or will I not notice the difference? (My current mobo is PCIe V2 so even V3 would be an improvement).

 

I have an ATX case by the way:

Riotoro CR1088 Compact ATX

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0766DLZ4D/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_.buSEb92QZ0AG

Edited May 5, 2020 by ShiningLizard
included case

[porina]

5 minutes ago, ShiningLizard said:

With the mobo recommendations, I see that they are all B450 variants... Is it not worth going for an X570 so I get PCIe v4 support, or will I not notice the difference? (My current mobo is PCIe V2 so even V3 would be an improvement).

If you're waiting a bit anyway before deciding on replacing the system, B550 should be out by then.

 

I really wouldn't worry about PCIe speeds in the short term as it makes no practical difference at least in gaming situations.

[Dravinian]

16 minutes ago, ShiningLizard said:

Thank you guys for all the recommendations. I am leaning towards getting a new GPU first and seeing how it copes with my current system..  I was planning on buying the parts a few at a time to spread out the cost, too.

 

With the mobo recommendations, I see that they are all B450 variants... Is it not worth going for an X570 so I get PCIe v4 support, or will I not notice the difference? (My current mobo is PCIe V2 so even V3 would be an improvement).

 

I have an ATX case by the way:

Riotoro CR1088 Compact ATX

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0766DLZ4D/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_.buSEb92QZ0AG

No GPUs don't max out PCIe Gen 3, and unless you willing put down £160+ for a Gen 4 SSD (1tb) then you won't notice much difference.

Besides Gen 3 PCIe SSDs are barely slower in any event.

 

If you were going to go Ryzen 9 3950x, then I would say get a x570, as you might as well future proof yourself on what Gen 4 might bring - given what you would be spending anyway, but considering where your budget is, and what you might be buying, you would likely have to upgrade in the future in any event.

[ShiningLizard]

Thank you guys, that really helps regarding PCI support.

 

It looks like B550 is due very soon so I'm thinking I will go ahead and get my GPU first (get the biggest and probably most significant purchase out of the way!) and use it for a little on my current rig, and grab a B550 when that's out... then the Ryzen 5 3600 and RAM.

 

I've already ordered a new PSU since it seems sensible to get a new one since mine is 6 years old and out of warranty, and feel it makes sense since I'm going to be doing some signficiant upgrades soon.

[SkilledRebuilds]

15 min Mark for Gaming results 4770k vs 7thGenHEDT 8Core + 5700 nonXT.