[SOLVED] Contested on what to upgrade.

[zwoodhall]

Hi all,

This holiday season I am planning to upgrade my PC in either the GPU or CPU department, but the problem is I don't know if it will work or if it is worth it.

I currently have a Ryzen 3 3200g CPU and a GTX 1650 GPU running on 32GB of RAM and an ASUS PRIME A320M-K motherboard and a 500W PSU.

I am wanting to either upgrade to a GTX 3070 or a Ryzen 7 3700X, which one would be more worth while and will they both work with what I currently have.

Many thanks.

 

[spacejunk]

3070 will give the most gains, even though the 3200 will bottleneck it quite heavily. But going that route would also necessitate the purchase of a more powerful PSU.

 

[ttower2020]

Also consider that upgrading your CPU should include a motherboard upgrade as well. The A320 chipset is the baseline budget board, and shouldn't be used with a higher power CPU like the 3700X. You can, it will work, assuming you have the BIOS updated for compatibility, but it is not recommended. That being said, upgrading the GPU is almost always the better option for gaming, but the CPU needs to be able to keep up, which the Ryzen 3 will fall behind. You should upgrade both, with a GPU upgrade being the priority. But maybe you could upgrade teh CPU with available stock, then save to upgrade the GPU when they are actually back in stock.

 

[spacejunk]

Also consider that upgrading your CPU should include a motherboard upgrade as well. The A320 chipset is the baseline budget board, and shouldn't be used with a higher power CPU like the 3700X. You can, it will work, assuming you have the BIOS updated for compatibility, but it is not recommended. That being said, upgrading the GPU is almost always the better option for gaming, but the CPU needs to be able to keep up, which the Ryzen 3 will fall behind. You should upgrade both, with a GPU upgrade being the priority. But maybe you could upgrade teh CPU with available stock, then save to upgrade the GPU when they are actually back in stock.

I was going to suggest something similar, but if my userbench calculations are correct he will still get phenomenal gaming performance with just the 3070. Even if he upgrades to a 3700x it will still bottleneck the 3070. So from a cost/benefit analysis the 3070 is actually a pretty decent move.

The 3070 performance gains alone will be more than enough to bridge the gap until you can upgrade the rest of the system. Also the 3070 is great in terms of future-proofing. With physics handled by the GPU, the 3200 should still allow for massive performance gains. My vote is for the 3070 + 750w PSU.

 

[ttower2020]

I was going to suggest something similar, but if my userbench calculations are correct he will still get phenomenal gaming performance with just the 3070. Even if he upgrades to a 3700x it will still bottleneck the 3070. So from a cost/benefit analysis the 3070 is actually a pretty decent move.

The 3070 performance gains alone will be more than enough to bridge the gap until you can upgrade the rest of the system. Also the 3070 is great in terms of future-proofing. With physics handled by the GPU, the 3200 should still allow for massive performance gains. My vote is for the 3070 + 750w PSU.

Agreed. That is what I would do if you could get your hands on a 3070, for sure. That being said, good luck finding one not overpriced.

 

[spacejunk]

Agreed. That is what I would do if you could get your hands on a 3070, for sure. That being said, good luck finding one not overpriced.

Hah, yeah. I wonder by how much the market will stabilize in the coming months. Nvidia seems to have mastered the whole supply & demand thing now, to the point they could probably charge whatever they want, And stock would still be eagerly gobbled up by the enthusiast demographic just so they can show off their rig on Reddit lol.