[SOLVED] How much is my i5-6500 really holding me back?

[Alex411]

So I recently purchased an rx 5700xt to replace my rx 580 8gb, but now I feel like I have gotten no performance increase. This lead me to believe that I'm being "bottlenecked" by my i5-6500. I looked into overclocking it but the general consensus was that to overclock a non-k processor I needed a z170 but I have a Z270 (GA-Z270p-d3 for specific). I do have my XMP on for my ram so I can get the full 3200MHz but other than that I'm not sure what else I can do to get the performance I thought I'd be getting from this new card. Any help would be appreciated!
Edit: I do have a fat noctua cooler, not sure which one in specific (huge heatsink and square-ish fan on the right cooling my cpu keeping it around mid 50s during full load).

 

[Supernova1138]

All of the 6th Gen i5s tend to bottleneck higher end GPUs on newer games these days, and overclocking wouldn't help you much even if you had one of the Z170 boards that had a special beta BIOS released to allow overclocking on non-k chips. The big problem is the lack of cores and threads, a lot of newer AAA games need more than 4 core and 4 threads if you are chasing high framerates, or even a consistent 60FPS in some cases.

What exactly is it that you are playing? If you're playing lots of Battlefield or Assassin's Creed for example, then you need a CPU upgrade, the old i5s just don't cut it anymore for those titles. Unfortunately the only real upgrade available on your current board would the the i7 6700k/7700k which is basically the same CPU you have now just with hyperthreading and some extra cache enabled. All the other CPU upgrade options require a new motherboard as well.

 

[Alex411]

All of the 6th Gen i5s tend to bottleneck higher end GPUs on newer games these days, and overclocking wouldn't help you much even if you had one of the Z170 boards that had a special beta BIOS released to allow overclocking on non-k chips. The big problem is the lack of cores and threads, a lot of newer AAA games need more than 4 core and 4 threads if you are chasing high framerates, or even a consistent 60FPS in some cases.

What exactly is it that you are playing? If you're playing lots of Battlefield or Assassin's Creed for example, then you need a CPU upgrade, the old i5s just don't cut it anymore for those titles. Unfortunately the only real upgrade available on your current board would the the i7 6700k/7700k which is basically the same CPU you have now just with hyperthreading and some extra cache enabled. All the other CPU upgrade options require a new motherboard as well.

Well that sucks to hear. I play a lot of games, as of recently I've been into Hunt Showdown and Rust, both games that I knew were cpu intensive but I had assumed that a gpu update was a better option for the long run and I had been trying to avoid having to buy a new motherboard. Are the new i9s not on the 1151 chipset or they just not compatible with my motherboard? I know that Ryzen is technically the better chip to be running as of right now, I'm just trying to avoid having to buy a new motherboard. But it seems like that is inevitable right now.

 

[Supernova1138]

8th and 9th gen Intel chips only run on 300 series chipset boards eg. Z370 or Z390, so you can't just pop one of those in. The only other thing that might improve performance if you don't have it already would be to get a second stick of RAM if you only have a single stick to enable dual channel. Memory bandwidth has become a limitation on some games and running your RAM in single channel can cause some hefty performance penalties in some cases.

Other than that, you'd have to try to cut down on background processes while you play to try to free up CPU resources, but that probably won't help a whole lot. Unless you can get a 6700k or 7700k for a really good price eg. less than just buying the R5 3600 and a B450 motherboard, you're probably going to have to bite the bullet and do a motherboard swap.

 

[Alex411]

8th and 9th gen Intel chips only run on 300 series chipset boards eg. Z370 or Z390, so you can't just pop one of those in. The only other thing that might improve performance if you don't have it already would be to get a second stick of RAM if you only have a single stick to enable dual channel. Memory bandwidth has become a limitation on some games and running your RAM in single channel can cause some hefty performance penalties in some cases.

Other than that, you'd have to try to cut down on background processes while you play to try to free up CPU resources, but that probably won't help a whole lot. Unless you can get a 6700k or 7700k for a really good price eg. less than just buying the R5 3600 and a B450 motherboard, you're probably going to have to bite the bullet and do a motherboard swap.

Ahhh ok, that stinks. I already have a second stick of ram so that isn't an option. I guess I'll just have to upgrade soon, thanks though!