New Build or Refresh?

[Raggamuffin]

Budget (including currency): £2500

Country: United Kingdom

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Some older games such as PSOBB, PSU Clementine. Newer games in the Total War series and future releases such as Hitman 3, Fable and Stalker 2

Other details: Current rig: ASUS ATX Z170-K motherboard, i7 6700k (never overclocked), 140mm Corsair AIO CPU cooler, x1 16GB stick 3000 Mhz Vengeance ram, 1080GTX FE, 700W Be Quiet! PSU

 

I apologise in advance, I have a tendancy to waffle on a bit. I'll put the important bits in italics

 

I'm looking at a possible refresh or new build in line with the upcoming Ampere release. The main issue I've had in the past is with framerates in games. With this build and previous one's I have always got monitors which pushed the GPU beyond it's comfort zone. First I had the Acer Predator Z35 and then upgraded to a Samsung 49" monitor with 32:9. The problem I had was owning a 21:9 monitor quite early on. Menus and cut scenes running in 16:9 and some games stretching got me a bit riled up. Of course, moving from 21:9 to 32:9 only complicated matters, as whilst 21:9 was becoming more mainstream, 32:9 most certainly was not. So now I'm using my old 4K TV until I sort out my new build, which will include a monitor. I believe 21:9 is less of an issue now in games, but I'm drawn towards getting a 16:9 with G-sync instead.

 

What I notice a lot in games is even if I maintain 60 FPS constant or 60+ I notice micro-stutter in almost every single game. If it's not micro-stutter is tearing. Now, of course in the PC gaming world you may well have to tweak many of your games. I'm used to this, but I'm also more of your "plug and play" type gamer. Still, I wish to stick with PC gaming, regardless of how tempting the next gen consoles look. I seem to recall having the least amount of stutter/tearing issues with the Z35. Although it did have a weird issue when moving the mouse in games, there'd be this black distortion around everything in the game and when I stopped moving, this shadowy stuff would disappear. I seem to recall I had to mess around with some "clamp" setting on Nvidia control panel and it fixed it, but made all the blacks a lot lighter and grey/washed out.

 

The idea of the refresh is that I've had my PC for 4 years and figure the CPU and motherboard could easily last a lot longer. I want to game at 4k and I don't think the 6700k will bottleneck an Ampere card at this resolution. As my PC is 4 years old I thought a new AIO CPU cooler and PSU would be a good idea. I'm not sure I'd need to bump up the 16GB ram to 32, but I will be changing the SSD up to an M.2. However, I have lost the screw for the motherboard M.2 slot, I'm not sure where to get them.

 

With next gen consoles having more CPU cores, I wonder is a refresh a good idea as I only have a quad core? Will games be optimised for these higher core count CPU's? In an ideal world I'd like to do a minimal upgrade of the current setup so the main money can go on the GPU (3080TI) and monitor (Asus ROG SWIFT PG43UQ). In fact, those 2 alone could blow my entire £2500 budget.

 

I figured the CPU and motherboard should have at least another 4 years life left in them. At the same time, I'm the kind of guy who likes to start up a game, crank everything to Ultra and enjoy it without issue. So as time has gone by my 1080GTX and rather extravagent choice in monitors has got me increasingly frustrated. Now, whilst my budget is £2500, part of me reckons if I was to do a new build entirely, I could do it bit by bit. I can set aside £500 a month. So if I have an expensive build in mind, I can wait longer to get everything I want.

 

What would you guys recommend for 4k gaming, bearing in mind I like everything on max graphics where possible, and I'm concerned about my CPU not being up to the task of the next gen titles.

 

Ed

 

[5x5]

Wait two months and move to Zen 3 while keeping the card, storage, RAM and power supply

[Haro]

10 hours ago, Raggamuffin said:

core count CPU's?

they most likely wont scale over 6 cores.

10 hours ago, Raggamuffin said:

What would you guys recommend for 4k gaming

i mean honestly at 4k, most of the load is on the gpu rather than the cpu, wait for ampere and big navi and zen 3 and check what they have to offer..

[Raggamuffin]

2 minutes ago, 5x5 said:

Wait two months and move to Zen 3 while keeping the card, storage, RAM and power supply

But the 1080GTX isn't comfortable with running a lot of games at 4k on max settings. I can't see what a CPU change would do to improve this.

 

Ed

[Raggamuffin]

3 minutes ago, TofuHaroto said:

they most likely wont scale over 6 cores.

i mean honestly at 4k, most of the load is on the gpu rather than the cpu, wait for ampere and big navi and zen 3 and check what they have to offer..

I did wonder about games like Total War however. I believe they're quite CPU heavy in those battle scenes etc. In fact, every PC I've had has never ran smoothly on any Total War game newer than Medieval II and that was released in 2006.

 

Ed

[Mateyyy]

Get another similar RAM stick to run them in dual-channel, since single-channel memory will impact gaming performance quite significantly in some titles.

In order to improve your 4K performance, your best bet would be waiting a couple more months until Nvidia Ampere and AMD RDNA2 GPUs release.

[Haro]

10 hours ago, Raggamuffin said:

and that was released in 2006.

i mean,i would say this current rig is fine, and unless you absolutely need it, just wait for zen 3 and ampere and big navi.

[Raggamuffin]

1 minute ago, Mateyyy said:

Get another similar RAM stick to run them in dual-channel, since single-channel memory will impact gaming performance quite significantly in some titles.

 

I didn't realise this. Thank you for that. With another stick installed in the correct slot on the motherboard, does it automatically switch to dual channel - or do I have to change something on the BIOS or elsewhere?

 

Ed

[Mateyyy]

Just now, Raggamuffin said:

I didn't realise this. Thank you for that. With another stick installed in the correct slot on the motherboard, does it automatically switch to dual channel - or do I have to change something on the BIOS or elsewhere?

No, you shouldn't have to change anything in the BIOS. Just make sure to install them in alternating slots - generally slots 2 and 4 are recommended for most boards.

[Raggamuffin]

2 minutes ago, Mateyyy said:

No, you shouldn't have to change anything in the BIOS. Just make sure to install them in alternating slots - generally slots 2 and 4 are recommended for most boards.

Good to know. I've bookmarked a link to the RAM I need and will buy it next payday.

 

Ed

[Raggamuffin]

6 minutes ago, TofuHaroto said:

i mean,i would say this current rig is fine, and unless you absolutely need it, just wait for zen 3 and ampere and big navi.

What is the expectation with regards to zen3? I know AMD has been doing well with CPU's in recent years, but will that have a big impact on 4k gaming?

 

Ed

[Haro]

10 hours ago, Raggamuffin said:

What is the expectation with regards to zen3?

a lot better compared to zen 2 essentially, according to leaks and rumors, 50% fpu performance and iirc 20 or 25% ipc, so it'll be a pretty good upgrade. 

 

10 hours ago, Raggamuffin said:

but will that have a big impact on 4k gaming?

well, it'll be an improvement in general, considering that you wont be limited to a 4c/8t chip anymore.