My upgrade Limitations

[Loot3d]

Budget (including currency): Theoretical AUD

Country: Australia

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Anything and everything.

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

 

My current computer is serving me well, though I would like to get a higher resolution monitor at some stage as my current is only 1080p. I'm thinking my pc may struggle though, with anything too demanding at any higher resolution than 1080p... so I'm looking at upgrading my GPU (and plus, some level of ray tracing might be nice). My current parts are: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/XZ4m2m (Intel i7 8th gen CPU, 1070ti graphics card, 650w power supply). 

 

Please keep in mind that money is of course a concern, and at the moment I am just considering options.

My questions at the moment are:

 

• If I was to upgrade my Graphics card to a 30XX card, would my CPU be able to handle gaming at 2k or even 4k (at a decent refresh rate) or would I also need to upgrade my CPU?

 

• Up to which 30XX do you think the 650w power supply would handle before I would also need to upgrade that?

 

• If you think I would need to upgrade to a newer gen CPU then do you think it would be worth trying to upgrade my current system, using a new GPU, DDR4 motherboard (so I can reuse RAM), CPU, and possibly power supply? Or would the cost be enough to warrant spending more and going with a DDR5 motherboard, new RAM, CPU, GPU, power supply etc...

 

I guess at the main question is: Is it feasible to upgrade my computer and if so, with what, or should I be looking to save up for an altogether new system?

 

P.S. I personally think I should at least wait until the 40 series of GPUs come out before I make any final decisions on upgrading to a new graphics card as it would provide more options and hopefully at least drive the price of 30 series cards down some. Feel free to tell me if I'm wrong.

[Dukesilver27-]

CPU wise, for current games, most likely will be fine, higher resolution taxes the GPU more than the CPU, for future games however, I'm not so sure. Looking at latest PC release, the Spider-man Remastered, my i5-12400 could reach up to 90% utilization at times (1440p very high preset with RT on high settings). 

If game devs utilize the same coding as the Spider-man Remastered, CPUs will likely to play a bigger role in gaming, helping the GPU with RT. Some people with 5900x and 12900k even see 50-60% utilization, which is the most anyone has seen on gaming. 

 

PSU, 650w only up to RTX 3070 (depending on the AIB model).

 

With the current state of DDR5, it's not worth it to invest on DDR5, very little performance gain according LTT's video.

DDR5 boards cost a lot more than DDR4 boards, which is not good bang for buck.

 

If you could wait 3-6 more months, I'd suggest to wait for the next gen everything to drop, Ryzen 7000 is around the corner, RTX 4000 series within this year (maybe), RX 7000 series also a maybe.

If you can't wait however, given your current build, I'd go with something like this.

i7-12700KF, Z690 board, RTX 3080 12GB/RX 6900 XT, a high quality 850W PSU.  

 

[Loot3d]

Yeah, I'm planning on waiting anyway as upgrading is definitely a WANT at the moment, not a NEED... it does get quite tempting though... 

 

Personally, I think it's right on the border of upgrading being impossible without replacing everything anyway. 

 

if I was to 'upgrade'  anything more than just the GPU, the only 'original' things would be my case, HDD's (which should probably be replaced anyway at this point), and RAM. So maybe I just build a new computer once the new stuff drops and if DDR5 still isn't worth the upgrade go for a DDR4 and use my 32GB kit from my current machine in that and repurpose my old machine into a server of something. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[jaslion]

If you wanna go 1440p a 1070ti does that at higher settings 60fps+ still.

 

As for if you want high fps at those settings a rtx3070/3070ti or rx6800(xt) would be the limit for your psu but are good 1440p cards (thr rx6800(xt) is

normally thr cheaper faster option)

 

Other than that your pc is gonna be fine for years to come

[Somerandomtechyboi]

35 minutes ago, Loot3d said:

Yeah, I'm planning on waiting anyway as upgrading is definitely a WANT at the moment, not a NEED... it does get quite tempting though... 

you could try tuning your current pc, most notably gpu overclock to get more performance out of it

[jaslion]

56 minutes ago, Dukesilver27- said:

CPU wise, for current games, most likely will be fine, higher resolution taxes the GPU more than the CPU, for future games however, I'm not so sure. Looking at latest PC release, the Spider-man Remastered, my i5-12400 could reach up to 90% utilization at times (1440p very high preset with RT on high settings). 

If game devs utilize the same coding as the Spider-man Remastered, CPUs will likely to play a bigger role in gaming, helping the GPU with RT. Some people with 5900x and 12900k even see 50-60% utilization, which is the most anyone has seen on gaming. 

 

PSU, 650w only up to RTX 3070 (depending on the AIB model).

 

With the current state of DDR5, it's not worth it to invest on DDR5, very little performance gain according LTT's video.

DDR5 boards cost a lot more than DDR4 boards, which is not good bang for buck.

 

If you could wait 3-6 more months, I'd suggest to wait for the next gen everything to drop, Ryzen 7000 is around the corner, RTX 4000 series within this year (maybe), RX 7000 series also a maybe.

If you can't wait however, given your current build, I'd go with something like this.

i7-12700KF, Z690 board, RTX 3080 12GB/RX 6900 XT, a high quality 850W PSU.  

 

I also see 10 threads being utilized well by the new spiderman game. Which is to be expected the console have 12 available after all.

 

So basically things are working well. It also seems to not be the most optimized game in terms of cpu usage but its fine.

[Dukesilver27-]

6 minutes ago, jaslion said:

I also see 10 threads being utilized well by the new spiderman game. Which is to be expected the console have 12 available after all.

 

So basically things are working well. It also seems to not be the most optimized game in terms of cpu usage but its fine.

Yeah, this kind of made me regret going with 12400, if future games will use this much or more CPU, I might be screwed, should've shelled out a bit more for 12600K.

But hey, I'm just happy that the game runs quite well on my system, a whole lot better than when HZD came out, that's for sure. Let's see if future patches could improve CPU usage.

[jaslion]

1 hour ago, Dukesilver27- said:

Yeah, this kind of made me regret going with 12400, if future games will use this much or more CPU, I might be screwed, should've shelled out a bit more for 12600K.

But hey, I'm just happy that the game runs quite well on my system, a whole lot better than when HZD came out, that's for sure. Let's see if future patches could improve CPU usage.

If its anything like previous gen consoles basically expect a one to one on threada needed for operation. Which means youll be fine. Sure it will max it out from time to time but thats ok.