What should my upgrade path be?

[Bjorkor]

Hey all! Long time fan of the youtube channel, first time poster. Just created an account to ask this actually. Sorry if this is in the wrong section, please move it if so.

 

So here is what's in my current rig:

 

i5 3570k at 4.2ghz

2x GTX 970 GPUs in SLI

 

I hit well over 60 fps in most games, but in more CPU bound titles like Witcher 3 and GTA V I see some CPU bottlenecking (naturally) and really can't stand the sudden frame drops associated with it.

 

My question is what should my upgrade path look like?

 

I was thinking about jumping up to a 6600k/6700k on the CPU side, or a GTX 1080 on the GPU side.

 

In a couple months I will end up having gotten both most likely, but which makes the most sense to go with first? What are the pros and cons you see with this? Which will give me the most tangible benefits?

 

Thank you for reading.

[Lumaterian]

1080 isn't super necessary, but I'd 100% recommend an i7 if you overclock or a 4-core hyperthreaded Xeon if you don't. Platform upgrade isn't super necessary (hey, repeated text), you can pick up a used i7/Xeon for 1155 on ebay pretty cheaply.

[Guest]

You could upgrade the cpu to something like a i7-3770K.

[Ezio Auditore]

Your cpu bottleneck should not be significant as most titles don't use more than 4 cores and on top of it you have overclocked it.so i feel you go far a 1080 first.

[Bjorkor]

15 minutes ago, Lumaterian said:

1080 isn't super necessary, but I'd 100% recommend an i7 if you overclock or a 4-core hyperthreaded Xeon if you don't. Platform upgrade isn't super necessary (hey, repeated text), you can pick up a used i7/Xeon for 1155 on ebay pretty cheaply.

 

15 minutes ago, spidsepttk said:

You could upgrade the cpu to something like a i7-3770K.

 

I guess I really didn't consider staying on this platform. I will definitely look into this, thank you both!

 

15 minutes ago, Ezio Auditore said:

Your cpu bottleneck should not be significant as most titles don't use more than 4 cores and on top of it you have overclocked it.so i feel you go far a 1080 first.

It does seem fairly significant to me. Often times I only see ~50-70% GPU load while my CPU is redlining.

 

BUT I was thinking that perhaps CPU load increases with more GPUs, more so than just having a more powerful single GPU. (i.e. replace 970's with more powerful single GPU  and reduce CPU load as a result) Thoughts?

[Lumaterian]

2 hours ago, Bjorkor said:

BUT I was thinking that perhaps CPU load increases with more GPUs, more so than just having a more powerful single GPU. (i.e. replace 970's with more powerful single GPU  and reduce CPU load as a result) Thoughts?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I think that's 100% not a thing