[SOLVED] Future path to upgrades for current bottleneck build

[ishmeetrocks]

Hi all,
I am a proud owner of an AM3+ socket motherboard with AMD FX 6300 CPU. Who recently decided to upgrade my pc.
I bought a RTX 3070 that i used as an upgrade over the AMD R9 270x that i had previously. Now the issue I had with this pc was I was pretty much locked on the upgrade options I had on it. I was using an old cpu on an old motherboard (with a socket that was no longer supported on modern CPUs Am3+) and DDR3 RAM. Any upgrade of even a single component required me to overhaul my whole system to achieve any significant improvement.

I again feel we are on the same cusp of change of technology ryzen gen 3 is probably the last one supported on current motherboards even the high end x570 motherboards might not see gen4 coming to them. Also, even the rams are expected to change to DDR5 for the next gen.
As good as this gen seems on ryzen 5000 series, I feel if I upgrade now I will be locked in an outdated system for long or will have no clear path to upgrades in the future unless I overhaul the full build.

Currently i am doing the blasphemy of running a RTX 3070 with a severely bottlenecking FX 6300 and 8 gb of DDR3 i do not know how to upgrade without bottlenecks and a path to future upgradations.
Please help.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Worrying about the future, that much, is a fools game. Bottom line is, if you upgrade to an X570 or B550 platform now with some flavor or Ryzen 3000 or 5000 CPU, that's probably going to last you five years, at least, and depending on what CPU you buy there are some pretty significant upgrade paths for that platform that are actually more like sidegrades, but not really because while there isn't a whole lot out there right now that really supports more than 6-8 threads for gaming (Unless you are also recording, streaming, VMs, etc.) and even most applications, even those that are decently optimized for multithreaded performance, won't utilize more than that very well in most cases, there will be as time goes on.

So if you were to go with ANY of the Ryzen 3000 series or 5000 series CPUs now, you would be doubling or more your CPU performance, even with something like the Ryzen 3600. And while motherboards tend to get scarce, and expensive, later in the product lifecycle, CPUs generally don't. There are plentiful CPUs that still work perfectly fine as far back as even early Core2 or Athlon II (Or older even) generations, so upgrading to an 8 or more core Ryzen CPU from the 5000 series down the road could be like a whole new upgrade all over again because software will assuredly be better suited to take advantage of those additional cores then, whereas they aren't now, at least, not to the extent they could be. There is a lot of software out there, Windows included, that leaves much of the multithreaded performance on the table the way things are at the moment.

It's better than it was even a couple of years ago, but since very high core count CPUs are still relatively new for the consumer market, it's still something that is being added into a lot of software in an ongoing fashion.

If you always wait because something better is around the corner, you will ALWAYS be waiting. There is never going to be a platform that comes out that has unlimited upgrade potential for the next four or five years, like there was for AM4. I think AMD has learned their lesson from it's experience with promising that and I wouldn't expect to ever see that happen with them again. Intel on the other hand, has generally never gone past two generations of compatibility for any platform over the last ten years or so.

You NEED an upgrade. I'd just do it now. Or else plan to continuously be in a holding pattern.

 

[getochkn]

Every intel generation usually needs a new MB, so getting even 1 generation of an cpu update is better with AMD.

 

[ishmeetrocks]

Worrying about the future, that much, is a fools game. Bottom line is, if you upgrade to an X570 or B550 platform now with some flavor or Ryzen 3000 or 5000 CPU, that's probably going to last you five years, at least, and depending on what CPU you buy there are some pretty significant upgrade paths for that platform that are actually more like sidegrades, but not really because while there isn't a whole lot out there right now that really supports more than 6-8 threads for gaming (Unless you are also recording, streaming, VMs, etc.) and even most applications, even those that are decently optimized for multithreaded performance, won't utilize more than that very well in most cases, there will be as time goes on.

So if you were to go with ANY of the Ryzen 3000 series or 5000 series CPUs now, you would be doubling or more your CPU performance, even with something like the Ryzen 3600. And while motherboards tend to get scarce, and expensive, later in the product lifecycle, CPUs generally don't. There are plentiful CPUs that still work perfectly fine as far back as even early Core2 or Athlon II (Or older even) generations, so upgrading to an 8 or more core Ryzen CPU from the 5000 series down the road could be like a whole new upgrade all over again because software will assuredly be better suited to take advantage of those additional cores then, whereas they aren't now, at least, not to the extent they could be. There is a lot of software out there, Windows included, that leaves much of the multithreaded performance on the table the way things are at the moment.

It's better than it was even a couple of years ago, but since very high core count CPUs are still relatively new for the consumer market, it's still something that is being added into a lot of software in an ongoing fashion.

If you always wait because something better is around the corner, you will ALWAYS be waiting. There is never going to be a platform that comes out that has unlimited upgrade potential for the next four or five years, like there was for AM4. I think AMD has learned their lesson from it's experience with promising that and I wouldn't expect to ever see that happen with them again. Intel on the other hand, has generally never gone past two generations of compatibility for any platform over the last ten years or so.

You NEED an upgrade. I'd just do it now. Or else plan to continuously be in a holding pattern.

Would i be bottlenecking my rtx 3070 with a ryzen 5 3600xt?

 

[cryoburner]

It will likely be over a year before we see Zen4 CPUs utilizing DDR5, and the same probably goes for Intel processors as well. Intel will be releasing another generation of 14nm CPUs supposedly in March, which makes it seem a bit unlikely that they will have another generation of processors utilizing DDR5 out for consumer platforms until early 2022. AMD just started launching higher-end models utilizing Zen3 within the last couple months, and will undoubtedly be launching more value-oriented models relatively soon. Considering they have been going 15-16 months between launches of recent Ryzen generations, I wouldn't expect a new consumer platform from them until probably a few months into 2022 as well.

It seems a bit of a waste to running something like an RTX 3070 on an FX-6300. We're talking about a processor that is not only less than half as fast at lightly-threaded workloads compared to a Ryzen 5600X, but also lacks SMT, and uses an architecture that makes it behave more like a 3-core processor for floating-point operations, which modern games tend to make heavy use of. At heavily multithreaded workloads, a 5600X can be several times as fast.

Would i be bottlenecking my rtx 3070 with a ryzen 5 3600xt?

"Bottlenecking" depends heavily on what resolution and refresh rate you are targeting. If you are running games at 1080p on a high refresh-rate screen, then even the fastest CPUs available today will be limiting your performance in nearly all of today's games with a 3070. At higher resolutions in recent graphically-demanding titles though, most current CPUs should be able to keep up with the graphics card pretty well, minimizing the differences between them. A screen with only a 60Hz refresh rate will also be limited to updating the image 60 times per second, so frame rates far in excess of that won't make too much difference on such a screen.

However, what sort of pricing are you seeing the 3600XT for? Generally, it's only slightly faster than a 3600 or 3600X (which perform nearly the same), and it's probably not worth paying much more for. If it's priced near $300 or more, I would say it's not worth it, as the $300 5600X can be significantly faster in CPU-limited games. That is, provided you can find one right now, as they are in rather short supply at the moment. Perhaps we might see supplies of those processors improve over the coming weeks though, and maybe we'll even hear about some additional models launching to fill out the product stack at CES in a couple weeks.

If you always wait because something better is around the corner, you will ALWAYS be waiting. There is never going to be a platform that comes out that has unlimited upgrade potential for the next four or five years, like there was for AM4. I think AMD has learned their lesson from it's experience with promising that and I wouldn't expect to ever see that happen with them again. Intel on the other hand, has generally never gone past two generations of compatibility for any platform over the last ten years or so.

I wouldn't necessarily say "never". For the most part, we seem to be getting to a point where typical changes to new hardware tend to be small enough where they don't really justify breaking platform compatibility every couple years. Sure, it might add some additional work for manufacturers to ensure compatibility between generations, but there's generally little need for constantly pushing motherboards into obsolescence so frequently.

That being said, there's no guarantee that the next generation of processors will be significantly better. And DDR5 might be nice to leave open the possibility of reusing the same RAM with a new motherboard several years or more down the line, but usually the performance of new RAM at it's launch tends to be relatively slow, and the price relatively high. So, the first DDR5 modules probably won't perform much faster than current DDR4 modules, but they will likely cost more. And those processors coming out a few years down the line might perform best when paired with faster modules.

Every intel generation usually needs a new MB, so getting even 1 generation of an cpu update is better with AMD.

Usually Intel breaks compatibility every two generations, which means at least every-other generation tends to get a second set of CPUs available for it (though typically without any major improvements worth upgrading for). And at least at this point, chances seem fairly high that we won't be seeing another generation of processors available for AM4 either. It's possible we could see some models backported to AM4 or something, but I wouldn't count on that. And it's hard to say what will happen with the next generation platforms. AMD might retain their current setup of maintaining at least one generation of backward compatibility for their boards, with motherboard manufacturers optionally being able to support more, but it's not guaranteed.

 

[ishmeetrocks]

However, what sort of pricing are you seeing the 3600XT for? Generally, it's only slightly faster than a 3600 or 3600X (which perform nearly the same), and it's probably not worth paying much more for. If it's priced near $300 or more, I would say it's not worth it, as the $300 5600X can be significantly faster in CPU-limited games. That is, provided you can find one right now, as they are in rather short supply at the moment. Perhaps we might see supplies of those processors improve over the coming weeks though, and maybe we'll even hear about some additional models launching to fill out the product stack at CES in a couple weeks.

I am in india and we are not seeing that much scalping going on in here as demand for enthusiast grade products is fairly low

Prices for the products are roughly as follows
3600 - usd 251.23
3600x- usd 302.58
3800xt- usd 453.32
5600- usd 403.27

This above prices include the taxes and the import duties levied by the government which is around "smh" 28%.

Would you consider 5600 being 150$ more valuable than 3600 base ? I aim to game at max 2k 120 fps but will settle for 1080p ultra 60fps.

The old system made me rugged that way, frame rates do not irritate me that much just that it should be playable and smooth relatively.

 

[cryoburner]

That 5600X pricing seems a bit high relative to the 3600. At the moment, it might be kind of hard to justify the higher cost. If you are not planning on buying immediately though, availability and pricing of the new parts might improve a bit, and AMD might potentially announce something like a 5600 (non-X) relatively soon at a lower price than the existing model.

As far as how the performance compares, the Zen 3 5000-series parts (like the 5600X) can often get over 20% higher frame-rates in games that are limited by CPU performance compared to the 3000-series. So, that could potentially be worth getting for additional performance, particularly for lower resolution, high refresh-rate screen. At 1440p the faster CPU would make less of a difference on average, but the difference could still be noticeable in some titles, again assuming you are pairing it with a high refresh rate screen that can display the extra frames.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I wouldn't necessarily say "never".

I would. The first socket AM4 motherboards were released in September of 2016 and AMD guaranteed AM4 socket compatibility through 2020, which is has now, sort of, done. That's about 4.5 years if you count the fact that there are likely still 5000 series CPUs to be released over the next three or four months most likely, maybe even further out than that if you count on Zen 3 APUs.

There was a lot of hand wringing and backtracking, then changing of minds, then some boards won't support this or that, these ones won't have PCIe 4.0 support, those ones can't be used with certain CPUs, these ones will support these CPUs BUT if you update the BIOS you'll lose support for first and second Gen Ryzen models. I cannot see AMD or board manufacturers going through that again for another four to five year period of time. I just don't see it. We already know AMD has taken a lot of flack for having promised something that they were only able to partially adhere to anyhow.

If any board manufacturer makes a promise like that again I'll pull a McAfee on national tv. Well, maybe not. It didn't turn out so well for him. I'd pay a nickel though. Seriously, I think it was a learning experience for AMD and I doubt they'll "promise" anything like that again because I think there will always be something coming down the pipe that can't be implemented without making big enough changes to the socket that it can't be done without a redesign. You could be right, but looking back, it seems unlikely.

 

[Karadjgne]

Intel has been using the same Skylake 14nm process for 4 generations now. The only real progress has been the addition of tweaks enough in interior voltages to allow hyperthreading, otherwise it's a moot point. 9900k = 10700k with a few % IPC gain.

Not so with Amd. There's been almost roughly 20% gains in each successive generation, 1600-2600, 2600-3600, 3600-5600. That's including a drop from 14-12-7nm processes which drops voltage demands, temps etc yet increases speeds and performance. A 5600 @ 4.8GHz will do considerably more than a 1600 @ 4.0GHz, just on speeds alone, not including the bonus to IPC.

Amd is at least moving forward, any of the Ryzens are a far cry in upgrade performance from the prior FX. Intel is going round and round in a spiraling circle and about to hit the drain. If they cannot get 11th gen on a fully vested 10nm process at least, Amd will not only surpass them, again, but kick them into the dirt while they are at it.