GPU or Platform Upgrade?

[Flavius Heraclius]

Budget (including currency): ~500-800 USD

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Software development, light video recording/editing, a combination of older games, heavily modded Skyrim, and the occasional modern AAA title at 1440p
 

Other details

 

I've been going back and forth on this for a little while now, so I figured I'd ask about it. I have a computer that I built a couple of years ago that I've been looking to upgrade. It currently has an NVIDIA GTX 1080 GPU, an Intel 8700k CPU, and 32 GiB of DDR4 RAM (2133MT/s). It generally still works fine, but I am starting to notice its age when running newer games at 1440p (or just installing one too many Skyrim mods) and I'm needing to turn the details down to make 60 fps reliably. I actually was intending to get a new GPU back when NVIDIA's 30 series came out... but we all know how that went.

 

Anyway, I've been considering buying a new graphics card. Probably an AMD RX 7800XT or 7900XT (I use Linux a lot, so AMD GPUs are preferable). But considering the older platform that I'm on (particularly the PCIe gen 3), I've also been thinking about upgrading to a more modern CPU. Unfortunately, I probably only have the budget to do one of these at the moment.

 

I could use a little advice: which do you think I should prioritize? I'm sure that the GPU upgrade will have a larger immediate effect on gaming performance, but I'm not experienced enough with PC hardware to anticipate how much I'll be bottle-necked by my 8th gen Intel platform. I'll eventually get around to upgrading both, but I'm not sure which I should do first.

 

Thanks!

 

Edited January 18, 2024 by Flavius Heraclius
Added RAM speed

[Why_Me]

What RAM speed fo you have?

[Flavius Heraclius]

1 minute ago, Why_Me said:

What RAM speed fo you have?

2133 MT/s. It's four 8GiB sticks of C13 Corsair Vengence LPX.

[Why_Me]

13 minutes ago, Flavius Heraclius said:

2133 MT/s. It's four 8GiB sticks of C13 Corsair Vengence LPX.

This is a tough call tbh. I would probably go with the platform upgrade first seeing how Nvidia is still releasing new cards which will result in AMD lowering prices on their cards and that's going to take another month to shake out.  btw you want a 750W psu for the 7800 XT and a 850W psu for the 7900 XT.

 

Platform upgrade would look like this.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: *AMD Ryzen 5 7600 3.8 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($199.00 @ Newegg) 
Motherboard: *MSI PRO B650-S WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard  ($159.99 @ Newegg) 
Memory: *Silicon Power Value Gaming 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory  ($94.97 @ Amazon) 
Total: $453.96
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-01-17 21:44 EST-0500

 

 

 

[Flavius Heraclius]

9 minutes ago, Why_Me said:

This is a tough call tbh. I would probably go with the platform upgrade first seeing how Nvidia is still releasing new cards which will result in AMD lowering prices on their cards and that's going to take another month to shake out.  btw you want a 750W psu for the 7800 XT and a 860W psu for the 7900 XT.

Thanks! I had already upgraded to an 850W power supply ahead of my intended 30 series upgrade, so sounds like I'm good to go there so long as I stick with the 7800XT.

 

I'm not in a big rush, so I may just wait a month and see what shakes out pricing wise before deciding. Of course, I've been basically saying that to myself for going on 3 years now.

[Why_Me]

17 minutes ago, Flavius Heraclius said:

Thanks! I had already upgraded to an 850W power supply ahead of my intended 30 series upgrade, so sounds like I'm good to go there so long as I stick with the 7800XT.

 

I'm not in a big rush, so I may just wait a month and see what shakes out pricing wise before deciding. Of course, I've been basically saying that to myself for going on 3 years now.

https://www.techpowerup.com/317929/amd-radeon-rx-7900-xt-drops-to-usd-710-on-newegg-msrp-lowered-to-usd-749 

 

The release of the RTX 4070 Ti Super 16GB next week should force that card to drop even more imo.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 hour ago, Flavius Heraclius said:

It generally still works fine, but I am starting to notice its age when running newer games at 1440p (or just installing one too many Skyrim mods) and I'm needing to turn the details down to make 60 fps reliably

Thats just the gpu

800$ gets you a 7900xt or a 4070tis

 

For the cpu mobo combo you can upgrade later, for now just oc the cpu and run the rams at 3600-4000 or atleast 3200 if its crappy hynix mfr