To upgrade or not?

[Spudbilly]

Hello everyone.

 

My question is whether to upgrade me cpu or not. 

 

R7 2700x

Rx 6650 xt 8 GB

32 GB ddr4 3200mhz CL13

Asrock b450m pro 4

1 tb pcie 3.0 nvme storage for applications...upgrading to 4TB

512GB m.2 sata3 OS drive

Seasonic 550 gold 80+

Msi 144hz 1080p ips 1ms freesync display

 

I play mostly...

Star citizen

Starfield

Football Manager

Civilization

PUBG

 

 

Would..say a 5800x be worth it?

 

Thanks for your thoughts!

[Spudbilly]

Bump. Really hoping if anyone has insight. 

 

Thanks

[YoungBlade]

If you're asking this question, the answer is almost always "No" because it implies that your computer is currently meeting your needs. If it wasn't, you wouldn't be asking whether or not you should upgrade, but simply asking what you should upgrade to.

 

For gaming, you could potentially benefit from a CPU upgrade, but your GPU isn't exactly blazing fast, so the utility of a CPU upgrade is going to be limited to games where you are turning down settings to try to get better framerates.

 

In most games, when using a GPU as powerful as the RTX 3090, the 5800X is about 20-40% faster than the 2700X at 1080p. You can see that in this video from Hardware Unboxed:

 

However, with your RX 6650XT, you're not going to see that level of improvement, unless you are turning down settings in tandem with the upgrade.

 

The 5800X3D is the CPU I would consider upgrading to if I were in your shoes, as it's a much more substantial improvement in gaming performance. However, until you upgrade the RX 6650XT, even it wouldn't give you a ton of extra performance.

[MadAnt250]

17 hours ago, Spudbilly said:

Hello everyone.

 

My question is whether to upgrade me cpu or not. 

 

R7 2700x

Rx 6650 xt 8 GB

32 GB ddr4 3200mhz CL13

Asrock b450m pro 4

1 tb pcie 3.0 nvme storage for applications...upgrading to 4TB

512GB m.2 sata3 OS drive

Seasonic 550 gold 80+

Msi 144hz 1080p ips 1ms freesync display

 

I play mostly...

Star citizen

Starfield

Football Manager

Civilization

PUBG

 

 

Would..say a 5800x be worth it?

 

Thanks for your thoughts!

That is really up to you and your need/wants. I would consider the 5700X as it can perform the same-ish as the 5800X with pbo, can be found for cheaper and you can find a good deal sometimes.

3 hours ago, YoungBlade said:

If you're asking this question, the answer is almost always "No" because it implies that your computer is currently meeting your needs. If it wasn't, you wouldn't be asking whether or not you should upgrade, but simply asking what you should upgrade to.

 

For gaming, you could potentially benefit from a CPU upgrade, but your GPU isn't exactly blazing fast, so the utility of a CPU upgrade is going to be limited to games where you are turning down settings to try to get better framerates.

 

In most games, when using a GPU as powerful as the RTX 3090, the 5800X is about 20-40% faster than the 2700X at 1080p. You can see that in this video from Hardware Unboxed:

 

However, with your RX 6650XT, you're not going to see that level of improvement, unless you are turning down settings in tandem with the upgrade.

 

The 5800X3D is the CPU I would consider upgrading to if I were in your shoes, as it's a much more substantial improvement in gaming performance. However, until you upgrade the RX 6650XT, even it wouldn't give you a ton of extra performance.

You can't 100% measure user experience from bar graphs.

[YoungBlade]

29 minutes ago, MadAnt250 said:

You can't 100% measure user experience from bar graphs.

What objective metrics would you recommend using in their place to see if an upgrade will produce a meaningful performance uplift?

[MadAnt250]

2 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

What objective metrics would you recommend using in their place to see if an upgrade will produce a meaningful performance uplift?

Word of mouth, no really. I upgrade from a 2600X to a 5700X, it feels different and games are not the only thing that are running at the same time or the only thing a pc is used for. Benchmarks do have their place, but they don't show you everything.

[YoungBlade]

1 hour ago, MadAnt250 said:

Word of mouth, no really. I upgrade from a 2600X to a 5700X, it feels different and games are not the only thing that are running at the same time or the only thing a pc is used for. Benchmarks do have their place, but they don't show you everything.

The issue with that is that it can be your word against mine. For example, I upgraded from an i5 9600K to an R9 5900X. Arguably, that's a bigger upgrade than what you did. But when it comes to system responsiveness or a lot of games that I play, I honestly don't notice much of a difference most of the time, likely because my RTX 2060 Super is still the bottleneck in most of the games that I play.

 

So from my personal "word of mouth" account, I would say that upgrading from a 9600K to a 5900X isn't that amazing of an upgrade most of the time. Which probably sounds insane, but the thing is, it really isn't a meaningful upgrade for me 90% of the time. Because I don't do the things that I bought the 5900X for very often.

 

Which of us is right? Is the upgrade from a 2018 6 core CPU to a higher core count Zen 3 CPU meaningful or not?

[MadAnt250]

6 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

Which of us is right? Is the upgrade from a 2018 6 core CPU to a higher core count Zen 3 CPU meaningful or not?

Your experience seems to be different than mine, so the question of who is right cannot have a single one sided answer. Someone with an R7 2700X does not really need to upgrade unless the extra performance is required, just like someone with a 9600k and a 2060 super uesd for manly gaming. It works, but I notice the difference, and other people notice too. Am I going to tell people they should upgrade a slower but still working fine for their use system? No, but I can still make recommendations if they ask.

[Spudbilly]

50 minutes ago, MadAnt250 said:

Your experience seems to be different than mine, so the question of who is right cannot have a single one sided answer. Someone with an R7 2700X does not really need to upgrade unless the extra performance is required, just like someone with a 9600k and a 2060 super uesd for manly gaming. It works, but I notice the difference, and other people notice too. Am I going to tell people they should upgrade a slower but still working fine for their use system? No, but I can still make recommendations if they ask.

I appreciate both of your perspectives. This is why I ask here. Maybe there is a perspective I did not consider. 

 

I do realize that it would not make a big difference in a lot of applications, but it is my understanding that even with a mid range gpu that having a fast cpu can help with 1% lows instead average or peak framrate. I am aiming for 144 fps with less framedrop. So, 1% does matter as far as my overall experience goes.  I also stream on discord and have many other applications open. So, I lean towards still upgrading. Also, thinking about having a gpu upgrade in the future and not needing to upgrade both cpu and gpu. Price does matter a lot. The 5800x is only marginally more expensive for me than the 5700x and will be going with that choice. 

 

Thanks again guys for the discourse.

[MadAnt250]

17 minutes ago, Spudbilly said:

Thanks again guys for the discourse.

No problem.

[Bagzie]

This is a bit different than most because you listed star citizen which might be thee if not one of the most cpu dependant games going right now.

 

That game really loved the extra cache with the 7800X3D being a pretty conclusive winner , However the 5800X3D does really well too so it's not a bad shout if that's your main goal.

 

I would agree that with the above posters that to get the most from your setup you would want a gpu upgrade aswell at some point though.