Question Confused on which cpu am5 to upgrade to for 79000xtx hellhound

[Supadrumma4411]

Hey guys I recently decided to say sayonara to Nvidia and their bloated pricing (and stingy amount of vram) and upgrade my 3070 [language redacted] to a 7900xtx hellhound 24gb (because 8gb vram in 2025 just isn't good enough) and am really confusion on what cpu to best pair with this card for a complete system upgrade.

Currently rocking a 5600x am4 setup with 32g 3200mhz ram which is getting a bit long in the tooth, and the prices here in australia really dont make much sense for upgrading to say a 5800 x3d when then 9 series cpu's are just a few hundred bucks more. I am starting to notice stutter in a few games, mostly unreal engine 5 games at 1440p so I suspect the cpu and ram just arent up to snuff anymore.I am aware of having to upgrade my mobo and ram, mainly to take advantage of and future proof the pcie 5.0 which we will all have to upgrade to eventually.

So in terms of pricing, the 5800xt $350 AUD, 5900xt is $600. The 9 series I'm thinking of looking into are the 9700x which is $550, 9800x3d is $879, the 9900x is $700.

The mobo is the MSI 870 gaming plus mob that costs $450. The ram is CL28 32GB ddr5 costing me $220.

So my main questions are. Will the 5600x seriously bottleneck my 7900x at 1440p (I'm, guessing yes here stands to reason it well over 5 years old at this point) and will upgrading to a higher tier am4 cpu be "worth it" or should I just bite the bullet and do a full system upgrade to am5? The pricing for the 7 series chipset is not much cheaper than the 9 series so are they pointless to bother with and just go straight for the 9 series?

How much bang for my buck am I getting for the 9800x3d vs the 9700x for 1440p gaming? I know the 98x3d has its fancy cache that does.....something apparently amazing? Also how is the thermals on the 9 series because australia gets hot as hell where I live, well over 40degrees celsius.

Also, currently have a 4tb Samsung evo running sata2. There is no significant benefit to upgrading to nvme for gaming at this point correct? Its something I can leave to further down the line?

Can I afford to buy a cheaper Motherboard as well? Thanks in advance for any help provided this decision is making my brain hurt haha.

 

[Lutfij]

If you don't plan on going beyond 1440p, you can settle with a Ryzen 5 7600/7600x/7600X3D. You could also just pick up the 7800X3D and call it a day, as you're able to drop in beefier GPU's and go higher than 1440p in terms of resolution.

So my main questions are. Will the 5600x seriously bottleneck my 7900x at 1440p (I'm, guessing yes here stands to reason it well over 5 years old at this point) and will upgrading to a higher tier am4 cpu be "worth it" or should I just bite the bullet and do a full system upgrade to am5?
Please list the specs to your build like so:
CPU:
CPU cooler:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:
Monitor:
include the age of the PSU apart from it's make and model. BIOS version for your motherboard at this moment of time.

Can I afford to buy a cheaper Motherboard as well?
You're going to need to look through boards that have a beefy VRM design, that's what matters. Avoid ASRock boards.

 

[Supadrumma4411]

If you don't plan on going beyond 1440p, you can settle with a Ryzen 5 7600/7600x/7600X3D. You could also just pick up the 7800X3D and call it a day, as you're able to drop in beefier GPU's and go higher than 1440p in terms of resolution.

So my main questions are. Will the 5600x seriously bottleneck my 7900x at 1440p (I'm, guessing yes here stands to reason it well over 5 years old at this point) and will upgrading to a higher tier am4 cpu be "worth it" or should I just bite the bullet and do a full system upgrade to am5?
Please list the specs to your build like so:
CPU:
CPU cooler:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:
Monitor:
include the age of the PSU apart from it's make and model. BIOS version for your motherboard at this moment of time.

Can I afford to buy a cheaper Motherboard as well?
You're going to need to look through boards that have a beefy VRM design, that's what matters. Avoid ASRock boards.

CPU: 5600x with noctuah nh-d15 cooler
Ram: Gskill dd4 64gb 3200mhz
SSD: Samsung Evo 870
GPU: Geforce 3070 currently,
PSU: 750w (but i have purchases a 1000w for the new upgrade)
OS: Win10, currently having issues enabling secure boot on my MOBO, apparently its an issue with the b550 steel legend. Will just reboot back into bios, not windows with secure boot enabled. Annoyed me so i gave up.
Mobo: B550 steel legend atx
Monitor: 1440p 144hz

Price on 7800x3d is $700 and the price for 9800x3d is $850 so i might as well just spend the extra 150 bucks on that or is it completely wasted for 1440p?

 

[geofelt]

Games have different cpu demands.
To assess what your current cpu will do, run this simple test:
Run YOUR games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
This makes the graphics card loaf a bit.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
If your FPS stays the same, you are likely more cpu limited.

 

[Supadrumma4411]

Fps stays the same so it is indeed a cpu bottleneck then. In an effort to future proof I will buy the 9800x3d. Thanks for your help guys.

 

[thestryker]

It depends on how you're running games and what games you're playing as to what your difference may be. Hardware Canucks just did a video regarding CPU scaling and in a lot of stuff your 5600X is fine. I think it's very much worth the time to watch through:

View: https://youtu.be/TXKyQYiLro8?si=p7NRbbI4Q5x1SCmp

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Have you looked at the 5700x3d? Perhaps it’s more reasonable than the 5800x3d and would give you more time.