3060ti/3060 with i7 6700 non k? Upgrade? Or wait? (Budget)

[phil7990]

What would happen if I put in a 3060ti in this system? Would a 3060 be a better option? Or would I really need to upgrade? I can wait too. Eventually I'll upgrade the cpu and ram too but thats gonna cost too much right now so I only have money for either my cpu/mobo/ram or my gpu...

 

Specs:

i7 6700 non k

Z170 gaming a msi

16gb ram ddr4 2100 speed

XfX rx590

Corsair rmx 750w 2021

Fractal design meshify 2

Display: LG 24 inch 1080p 144hz (would like to have an option to upgrade to 1440p 144hz in the future)

 

Games I usually play are warframe, horizon zero dawn, shadow of the tomb raider, league of legends, and Forza Horizon 5

[doomsriker]

CPU is not a bottleneck for those cards but please wait at least a few more months. All trends suggest massive price drops coming soon so this is a really bad time to buy unless you can find a card at MSRP. 

[191x7]

1st upgrade the platform

2nd upgrade the monitor

3rd upgrade the GPU (when the prices normalise)

[phil7990]

1 minute ago, doomsriker said:

CPU is not a bottleneck for those cards but please wait at least a few more months. All trends suggest massive price drops coming soon so this is a really bad time to buy unless you can find a card at MSRP. 

Damn. I expected a different answer because I heard differently. What about ram? Is that an issue? I could buy faster ram but can my mobo and cpu handle that?

[leclod]

4 minutes ago, phil7990 said:

Damn. I expected a different answer because I heard differently. What about ram? Is that an issue? I could buy faster ram but can my mobo and cpu handle that?

I have a 7700K with 3000 Ram. I've tried running the ram at many settings including stock, I never could achieve any significant improvement.

[doomsriker]

1 minute ago, phil7990 said:

Damn. I expected a different answer because I heard differently. What about ram? Is that an issue? I could buy faster ram but can my mobo and cpu handle that?

Faster ram doesn’t do all that much on the Intel side, it is more of an issue with Ryzen. You might get a mild improvement but it wouldn’t be worth the investment IMO. I would sit tight and wait for crypto to crash, and/or newer GPUs to launch (which will drive down the price of all older cards too) as both are going to happen soon. Prices are slightly down right now but that’s mostly because everyone is trying to ditch their stock before the market tanks. 

[phil7990]

1 minute ago, leclod said:

I have a 7700K with 3000 Ram. I've tried running the ram at many settings including stock, I never could achieve any significant improvement.

Do you have a 3000 card? If so how does it run? Do you think a 6700 non k is a problem?

[YoungBlade]

Whether or not the CPU is a bottleneck depends entirely on what games you're planning to play and what settings you intend to use. At 1080p, I'd expect that you'll be CPU bottlenecked in a number of recent titles. Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Forza Horizon 5 from the games you listed are good examples - they will need more CPU resources to push the high framerates the 3060Ti is capable of at that resolution. Horizon Zero Dawn might be bottlenecked by the CPU depending on the framerate you're trying to hit and what settings you use. If you're okay with 60fps, your current CPU is fine. For League, it doesn't matter at all.

 

6 minutes ago, phil7990 said:

Damn. I expected a different answer because I heard differently. What about ram? Is that an issue? I could buy faster ram but can my mobo and cpu handle that?

Absolutely do not invest more money into that platform. It is dead and has no future. If you intend to upgrade to another DDR4 system, like getting Alder Lake with a DDR4 board or AM4, then fine, you can upgrade the RAM for now with the intent of sticking it in the new system later. Otherwise, just keep what you have.

[phil7990]

14 minutes ago, doomsriker said:

Faster ram doesn’t do all that much on the Intel side, it is more of an issue with Ryzen. You might get a mild improvement but it wouldn’t be worth the investment IMO. I would sit tight and wait for crypto to crash, and/or newer GPUs to launch (which will drive down the price of all older cards too) as both are going to happen soon. Prices are slightly down right now but that’s mostly because everyone is trying to ditch their stock before the market tanks. 

So happy to hear that cpu/mobo/ram wouldn't be a problem for a 3060ti.

Thanks and yes I will wait. 3060ti is at 650 euro's now. Could be at 500 euro's so...

 

Need to wait till the end of the year maybe so I've got nothing but time...

[phil7990]

7 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

Whether or not the CPU is a bottleneck depends entirely on what games you're planning to play and what settings you intend to use. At 1080p, I'd expect that you'll be CPU bottlenecked in a number of recent titles. Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Forza Horizon 5 from the games you listed are good examples - they will need more CPU resources to push the high framerates the 3060Ti is capable of at that resolution. Horizon Zero Dawn might be bottlenecked by the CPU depending on the framerate you're trying to hit and what settings you use. If you're okay with 60fps, your current CPU is fine. For League, it doesn't matter at all.

Then if I play aaa titles I should maybe tune down some options? Doesn't matter to me. Fps doesn't matter to me all that much. As long as its 60 fps for those games, its great. The only problem I have is when I don't limit the hz in game. 144hz in games will let my rx590 go nuts... My XFX rx590 has been downvolted since last year but has problems every now and then such as screen freezes, then it throws the settings to standard to then go all nuts and put me on black screen once I load the downvolt settings.' I'm kinda worried my gpu hasn't got too long anymore.

 

and yes I won't upgrade my ram untill I'll upgrade my cpu and mobo. Thanks for explaining.

[doomsriker]

15 minutes ago, phil7990 said:

Then if I play aaa titles I should maybe tune down some options? Doesn't matter to me. Fps doesn't matter to me all that much. As long as its 60 fps for those games, its great. The only problem I have is when I don't limit the hz in game. 144hz in games will let my rx590 go nuts... My XFX rx590 has been downvolted since last year but has problems every now and then such as screen freezes, then it throws the settings to standard to then go all nuts and put me on black screen once I load the downvolt settings.' I'm kinda worried my gpu hasn't got too long anymore.

 

and yes I won't upgrade my ram untill I'll upgrade my cpu and mobo. Thanks for explaining.

One good tip is that running at higher resolutions will squeeze more life out of your CPU by offloading more work onto the GPU, so investing in an nice 1440P or 4K monitor might be a good play especially since you said that frame rate is not a huge deal to you. 

[YoungBlade]

2 minutes ago, phil7990 said:

Then if I play aaa titles I should maybe tune down some options? Doesn't matter to me. Fps doesn't matter to me all that much. As long as its 60 fps for those games, its great. The only problem I have is when I don't limit the hz in game. 144hz in games will let my rx590 go nuts... My XFX rx590 has been downvolted since last year but has problems every now and then such as screen freezes, then it throws the settings to standard to then go all nuts and put me on black screen once I load the downvolt settings.' I'm kinda worried my gpu hasn't got too long anymore.

 

and yes I won't upgrade my ram untill I'll upgrade my cpu and mobo. Thanks for explaining.

For most settings options, turning things down does not help with a CPU bottleneck. It just decreases visual quality, which helps the GPU, but does not do anything to benefit the CPU.

 

CPU performance matters most when you're trying to push FPS. If you're comfortable with 60fps, then your 6700 can probably achieve that in any single player game - I don't know of one that exists today where it wouldn't. So for today's games, you should be fine.

 

However, you certainly would struggle with large, multiplayer games, like Battlefield 2042 128-player matches. The 6700 there does achieve an average above 60fps, but the lows tank, as there's stuttering.

[phil7990]

6 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

For most settings options, turning things down does not help with a CPU bottleneck. It just decreases visual quality, which helps the GPU, but does not do anything to benefit the CPU.

 

CPU performance matters most when you're trying to push FPS. If you're comfortable with 60fps, then your 6700 can probably achieve that in any single player game - I don't know of one that exists today where it wouldn't. So for today's games, you should be fine.

 

However, you certainly would struggle with large, multiplayer games, like Battlefield 2042 128-player matches. The 6700 there does achieve an average above 60fps, but the lows tank, as there's stuttering.

The only large mp games I have are battlefield 1 and V and ofcourse forza horizon 5.

[YoungBlade]

1 minute ago, phil7990 said:

The only large mp games I have are battlefield 1 and V and ofcourse forza horizon 5.

If you're okay with 60fps, then you're still okay there. From what I can find, Battlefield V is the most intensive, and it can get over 100fps out of the 6700 in matches. It's the jump from 64 to 128 players that really destroys the performance for the old 4c/8t i7 chips, which is a big part of the reason that so many players of Battlefield 2042 want there to be a 64 player option, and why Dice is considering just dropping the player count from 128 to 64 for Breakthrough.

[phil7990]

7 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

If you're okay with 60fps, then you're still okay there. From what I can find, Battlefield V is the most intensive, and it can get over 100fps out of the 6700 in matches. It's the jump from 64 to 128 players that really destroys the performance for the old 4c/8t i7 chips, which is a big part of the reason that so many players of Battlefield 2042 want there to be a 64 player option, and why Dice is considering just dropping the player count from 128 to 64 for Breakthrough.

Thank goodness. For the ones that are on a budget, figuring out what to buy for a pc is sometimes really annoying. I would had to give 1000+ euros if I had to upgrade everything. Now I only would need 500 euros. I recently upgrade my case and psu. Both were actually really bad to begin with and I ran 8 years with those 2. Hopefully I didn't physically dmg parts in my pc. Case had bad airflow to begin with and psu was bad in general. All in all, really good now. Great power from psu as well as good airflow. 10 degrees lower then what I had for both gpu and cpu.

 

Upgraded my cpu cooler from intel's standard to an arctic freezer 34. Not the best one but does a solid job at cooling. Only thing I would need extra is maybe a casefan or 2 for even better airflow.

 

[phil7990]

1 hour ago, doomsriker said:

One good tip is that running at higher resolutions will squeeze more life out of your CPU by offloading more work onto the GPU, so investing in an nice 1440P or 4K monitor might be a good play especially since you said that frame rate is not a huge deal to you. 

Framerate does matter to me when I play mp games. However the mp games I have are usually older. 1440p monitord are still too pricey. Right now I have 1080p144hz LG 24 inch. I would need a 27 inch 1440p144hz monitor. Thing is now that I have a 144hz monitor I can't go back to 60hz... And if I even got the extra money, I think my cpu/mobo/ram are still more in need of an upgrade then my monitor. My monitor is also only 3 years old so...