What Do I upgrade?

[Ali Salim]

Hi I'm looking to upgrade my system. It has an i3 7100, a gtx 1050, 16 gb of ddr4 memory, and a B250m Pro-vd motherboard from MSI.  

My question is, what makes more sense to upgrade? My i3 to an i5 or my gtx 1050 to a 1060? 

 

My main purpose is gaming. I mostly play first person shooter like overwatch, tf2, quake. But I also I play pub g and other which are cpu intensive.

 

If I were to upgrade my processor to an i5, which one would be most suitable and cost effective to my build?

Edited October 23, 2017 by Ali Salim

[Radium_Angel]

the CPU, if you are a gamer, it's probably holding you back more than the video card

[MrDrWho13]

4 minutes ago, Ali Salim said:

Hi I'm looking to upgrade my system. It has an i3 7100, a gtx 1050, and 16 gb of ddr4 memory. 

My question is, what makes more sense to upgrade? My i3 to an i5 or my gtx 1050 to a 1060? Thanks!

i3 to i5 imo

[dizmo]

What are you using your system for?
It'll play a huge part in what you ned to upgrade first. Video editing? CPU. Gaming? GPU.

 

Welcome to the forum.

[dizmo]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

the CPU, if you are a gamer, it's probably holding you back more than the video card

Unlikely.

[Pothos2728]

best thing to upgrade is cpu just get the i5 8400 its a very good cpu and still very cheap

 

[Ali Salim]

My main purpose is gaming. I mostly play first person shooter like overwatch, tf2, quake. But I also I play pub g and other which are cpu intensive.

[Ali Salim]

5 minutes ago, Pothos2728 said:

best thing to upgrade is cpu just get the i5 8400 its a very good cpu and still very cheap

 

I don't think my mother board supports that cpu. I have the b250m pro-vd mother board from msi.

 

[dju1]

Definitely upgrade the cpu, to either a ryzen 5 or i5. Of course, if you are playing at 1080p without details maxed out, the i3 will still get the job done.

[asand1]

30 minutes ago, MrDrWho13 said:

i3 to i5 imo

Yeah, should totally go from 4 threads to 4 threads Kappa

[asand1]

What games/programs?

[Aleks NE]

36 minutes ago, Ali Salim said:

Hi I'm looking to upgrade my system. It has an i3 7100, a gtx 1050, and 16 gb of ddr4 memory. 

My question is, what makes more sense to upgrade? My i3 to an i5 or my gtx 1050 to a 1060? Thanks!

I'd say get a better CPU. 

[Damascus]

Save for a 6700/7700/6700k/7700k and get a Volta GPU next gen

[OriginalCheezIt]

24 minutes ago, dju1 said:

Definitely upgrade the cpu, to either a ryzen 5 or i5. Of course, if you are playing at 1080p without details maxed out, the i3 will still get the job done.

Actually in this instance, it is better for the CPU to try to max out your settings as high as a 1050 will take you. Once you lower settings, the GPU is able to render more frames, but that means that the CPU will have to push more information to the GPU, which could turn the i3 into a bottleneck. So if you're getting 60fps on high, but only getting 65 on low, that's a good indicator of a CPU bottleneck, as your GPU should be able to push more frames at low settings. A general rule is that higher settings/resolutions tax the GPU, and higher framerates tax the CPU. This is why 4k CPU benchmarks generally show similar performance across a large range of processors; the GPU becomes the bottleneck.

 

EDIT: For OP, I would say upgrade your CPU if you are playing on a high refresh rate monitor, and upgrade your GPU if you are playing at 60Hz.

Edited October 22, 2017 by OriginalCheezIt
Additional information

[sputnik13]

Umm, rather than having others throw around random guesses at you, can't you run a resource monitoring app while you're playing a game, and see what gets pegged to 100% more often, the CPU or GPU, and upgrade the thing that's "holding you back"?  I think afterburner lets you log to a file:

If you're completely set up upgrading the CPU, core i5 7600 seems like the logical choice given your motherboard can't overclock