Upgrade Path Suggestions

[Fire_Burns_22]

Budget (including currency): ~$300

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: CS2, Minecraft, Halo, occasional racing games.

Other details Needing help deciding which course to go. I currently have an i7 7700 (non-k), 16 gb 3200 ddr4 ram, and a gtx 1650 with a 650watt power supply. I'm currently playing in the CS2 beta and while my setup does fine to surpass my 144hz monitor in CS GO, CS2 is a different story. Even with the settings scaled back, I'm not quite consistently getting 144fps or more. So an upgrade is needed, but I'm on a tight budget. 

I'm currently considering two options, but open to suggestions, 
1. I can upgrade to something like a 5600x with a b450/b550 motherboard, keeping my ram/ and 1650,
                Downside here is pretty straight forward, that I'm still going to be limited to my 1650 until I can afford to upgrade that. (probably after Christmas at this point)
2. I can upgrade the 1650 to something like an a750 or similar class of card.
                Downside with this option is that I'm currently only rocking PCIe Gen 3, and do not have resizable bar, so I'd be leaving a lot of graphics performance on the table until I can upgrade the processor and mb. 
 

What's everybody think would be a better route to go? If anyone has a different option altogether, I'm all ears. 

[Dutch_Master]

Right now, your CPU is the main bottleneck, so it makes sense to replace that. You may want to investigate the AMD R5 4600G, which is an APU. The GPU part may outperform the 1650 you have, but as I'm not familiar with the performance of a 1650 (never had one) I could be wrong on that. Using a B550 board allows a future CPU upgrade to the 5000 series, but it's worth noting that AMD essentially has stopped development on that gen Ryzen as it now has the 7000 series to compete with Intel.

 

As for your GPU upgrade, a 6600 or 6700 class card would be a sensible option if you're on a budget, the nVidia 3000 and 4000 series are overpriced for their performance tier, really.

[PcBeExpensive]

41 minutes ago, Fire_Burns_22 said:

Budget (including currency): ~$300

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: CS2, Minecraft, Halo, occasional racing games.

Other details Needing help deciding which course to go. I currently have an i7 7700 (non-k), 16 gb 3200 ddr4 ram, and a gtx 1650 with a 650watt power supply. I'm currently playing in the CS2 beta and while my setup does fine to surpass my 144hz monitor in CS GO, CS2 is a different story. Even with the settings scaled back, I'm not quite consistently getting 144fps or more. So an upgrade is needed, but I'm on a tight budget. 

I'm currently considering two options, but open to suggestions, 
1. I can upgrade to something like a 5600x with a b450/b550 motherboard, keeping my ram/ and 1650,
                Downside here is pretty straight forward, that I'm still going to be limited to my 1650 until I can afford to upgrade that. (probably after Christmas at this point)
2. I can upgrade the 1650 to something like an a750 or similar class of card.
                Downside with this option is that I'm currently only rocking PCIe Gen 3, and do not have resizable bar, so I'd be leaving a lot of graphics performance on the table until I can upgrade the processor and mb. 
 

What's everybody think would be a better route to go? If anyone has a different option altogether, I'm all ears. 

Yeah I would go with the
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($145.15 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550M AORUS ELITE Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($99.99 @ Newegg) 
Memory: Klevv BOLT X 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($55.99 @ Amazon) 
Total: $301.13
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-08-21 19:20 EDT-0400
I would do this, if you already have 32gb of 3200 MHz CL16 ram I would keep that if not I would buy new RAM. When you have the money for a GPU upgrade I would go for a 6700 XT but if you have a higher budget go more like a 6800 XT. I would go with AMD 6000 series or 7000 series when the 7700 XT and 7800 XT come out.

[Parsivan]

I usually suggest with upgrading go slow. so maybe try to span out your upgrade. but if you realy have to upgrade in one go for the cpu first. then after upgrade to a nice AMD gpu cause they are more budget friendly.