[SOLVED] Better performance, upgrade CPU or GPU?

[Koulis]

Hello.

So the main story here is that my friend has an Intel i5 6500 and a 1060. One day he said his GPU is getting bottlenecked by the CPU and he can't reach stable 60fps in Battlefield 1 and because of that he's gonna switch to a Ryzen 5 2600X, which means around 300€ including a new motherboard. I was shocked to hear that since his CPU and Mobo are less than 2 years old and we had an argument that if spending 300 on a 1070 would give him better performance than spending 300 on a new CPU and Mobo. And even if he's so keen to upgrading the CPU, he should get an i7 8700 which still costs around 300€ and is much better (imo) than the Ryzen 5 6500X.

I'm not an expert, but my initial thoughts were "how can an i5 6500 bottleneck a 1060", his response was a screenshot that showed his CPU at 100% load while his 1060 was sitting at 40%.

I post here for those two main questions:

1. Considering his build, what would be better to spend those 300+- on, a 1070, a Ryzen 5 2600X(and Mobo) or an i7 8700?

2. Does an i5 6500 really bottlenecks a 1060 that much?

Help me solve this case my fellow builders.

 

[shknawe]

I5-6500 has only 4 cores and 4 threads and no hyper threading. In short that's not a gaming cpu for this era. If his mobo can use the i7-8700 then that would not bottle neck the 1060. However now you can upgrade the gpu to take advantage of the new cpu. :]

 

[Lipex33]

The best CPU match for GTX 1060 6gb 192 bit is Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz. So the 6500 is an 90-95% ok pair for gtx 1060.
And for the upgrade. I would go for i7 8700 and a 1070 or 1080/1080ti would be better.