[SOLVED] Another Upgrade Question - CPU and GPU options

[Ken_90]

Hello again, Tom's Community! Merry (almost) Christmas and CoVid New Year! Ok, so I have a three-four year old custom build.. I've got a Ryzen 7 1700x on an AsRock AB350 Pro MB with 4xDDR4 2400 Ripjaws 8G for mem and two Radeon RX 480 8G GPUs... Now, I know I need to bump my Graphics card, so my first question is should I keep with the Crossfire and get a couple RX 580's? or rather focus down and get a RX 5700 XT or maybe a RX Vega 64? .. my second question is the smartest choice for next tier of CPU.. there's a lean towards the RyZen 5 3600 .. but im not sure if I should go a little further with a RyZen 7 3700 or 3800? I'd take any and all input on this and even other options or suggestions... Though, this build started as an AMD fan-boy build and I prefer to stay that way just because I think the GPU-CPU from same company naturally works best together and has proven itself a few times. I really like that I can drop a new processor into a RyZen motherboard and just update the BiOs (UEFi now, rather) I had a third question but can't seem to remember what it was... additional info- I use a few graphics programs (Adobe, Blender, Manga. Corel..etc) but I've been doing an increased amount of gaming with idle hands.. (Red Dead, Cyberpunk, Death Stranding..) additional specs- Liquid cooler for CPU, a WD Blue 1TB for storage but a Sandisk SSD as well, mostly for boot- up so it's only 240G ... That was the third question! Should I bump my SSD up to a TB (and reload Windows, ugh) replace the WD for a solid state instead... or just add another on the side if im looking for more storage.. Again, advice.... suggestions... observations... interesting facts... whatever might help me make a choice that has potential longevity, such as it is... Thanks in advance!
-Ken

 

[Ken_90]

correction... those mem sticks are GDDR5 .. just realized.

 

[CountMike]

correction... those mem sticks are GDDR5 .. just realized.

GDDR5 is memory on graphic cards, not any sticks as it's soldered,
Forget crossfire, there were just limited number of games that support it. 2 x any GPU only net's you about 30% and only in those games while it uses 100% more power, 100% more money and a lot of resources from whole system to say nothing about heat. That's very obsolete solution.
Generally, when playing at 1080p or less, it's CPU that's most important. Just for gaming 3600(x) should work with your MB if you update BIOS. If you need more cores due to streaming, multitasking etc, 3700x would be more appropriate and give you practically same game performance. 3800x only if you can get it at same price otherwise those 100 or so MHz more wouldn't net more than couple FPS.
RX 5700 XT would be great addition even if you were Nvidia fanboy although it has noting to do with Intel or AMD platform.
That MB also has "1 Ultra M.2 (PCIe Gen3 x4)" NVME drive can fit in there which is several times faster than SATA SSDs so that would be better solution for at least windows and depending on size also most important programs and games. Transferring staff including windows from your old SSD is no problem at all, there are many programs for that, my favorite is Macriun Reflect free. Job can be done in 15 minutes without loosing anything. Once you do that, your old SSD can be cleaned and used for installing games on it, whatever doesn't fit on NVME. HDD could also be kept for miscellaneous storage and backups. Using SSD for storage would not bring you anything.