Question Is this system bottlenecked if I upgrade?

[Yeldur]

Hi all,

Looking to query a system by people with more experience than myself.

Based on my knowledge, I think it's probable that this system is going to face bottlenecking, but I'm not 100,000% sure.

This is the current system:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/yCWJjH

The owner is looking to upgrade to a 4060, or a 3060 + 16GB of RAM (though the RAM isn't really a concern here)

Some of the potential concerns I've noted so far are...

1) System board is PCI-E 3.0 while 3060/4060 are PCI-E 4.0 (though I believe they can function on 3.0 it's a potential bottlenecking point)
2) CPU is pretty weak and could bog the GPU down if it can't keep up with it(?)

PSU could potentially need upgrading maybe but based on the estimate PCPP is giving it potentially not necessary at all either.

At the point of needing a GPU, CPU, Mobo, and memory upgrade, he's probably better off just buying a new system altogether realistically speaking lol.

Any questions, say the word, appreciate your thoughts and info!

 

[Lutfij]

1| If you want to upgrade the ram, look at a higher capacity DDR4-2666MHz dual channel ram kit with tight latencies instead of mixing and matching or sourcing another Corsair Vengeance LPX ram kit, since they will end up having different PCB revisions.
2| How old is the PSU in your build? Even if it was brand new, I would not pair that with the RTX3060 or RTX4060.
3| Lower PCIe speeds would limit your performance, but they are backwards compatible, true but what other option do you have besides a platform upgrade that would be more expensive than the GPU+PSU purchase?
4| Yes, he would be best off investing in a new platform, if he'll be able to tax the new system with his intended apps/games.

 

[Yeldur]

1| If you want to upgrade the ram, look at a higher capacity DDR4-2666MHz dual channel ram kit with tight latencies instead of mixing and matching or sourcing another Corsair Vengeance LPX ram kit, since they will end up having different PCB revisions.
2| How old is the PSU in your build? Even if it was brand new, I would not pair that with the RTX3060 or RTX4060.
3| Lower PCIe speeds would limit your performance, but they are backwards compatible, true but what other option do you have besides a platform upgrade that would be more expensive than the GPU+PSU purchase?
4| Yes, he would be best off investing in a new platform, if he'll be able to tax the new system with his intended apps/games.

1) Oh definitely, if he does a memory upgrade I'll make sure he knows not to mix and match.
2) 4 years on the PSU, when we're talking about pairings, is that mostly down to wattage or down to how the PSU is rated? The bronze rating did stick out to me for sure, but from what I can tell wattage seems to be OK
3) Yee, that's basically how I was looking at things too. You'd either be rebuilding the system from scratch with a new mobo or building a new rig entirely from scratch/buying one.
4) Most of the games he plays he hasn't had too much trouble with but Space Marine 2 (video game) is dropping and he's seeing some big performance issues there related to any texture settings above the lowest, which is what sparked this whole issue off haha.

As far as CPU goes, do you think that it's likely to be a bottleneck if he does manage to upgrade to a 3060/4060?

 

[Eximo]

The term bottleneck is better talked about in terms of system balance. Putting a faster GPU in will not make the system slower.

CPU vs GPU usage depends on your settings and resolution.
CPU basically sets the maximum FPS possible.
GPU sets the image quality.

When balanced you will see high CPU and GPU usage. If you increase the settings the GPU will show the higher load. If you lower the settings the CPU will see the higher load.

So lighter fast paced titles are more CPU dependent and nice looking AAA games are more GPU dependent. And if run a high resolution monitor at native resolution, then your CPU matters less.

Could potentially pick up an i7-8700k/8700 or i7-9700k/9700 for $100-125 on ebay to give it a little more life. But that would also mean a better cooler as well.

RTX 3060 is still a decent deal.

RTX4060 has better options from AMD in that price range. In a lot games the RX7600 will pull ahead for about $50 less. Or you can look at the RX6750XT which is a little more power hungry but faster in general. RTX4060 big advantage is DLSS and Ray Tracing though. I would argue that the lower end Ray Tracing performance is never worth it, but DLSS can make or break the FPS on newer games. AMDs FSR though does cover this gap, but just not quite as well.

 

[Yeldur]

The term bottleneck is better talked about in terms of system balance. Putting a faster GPU in will not make the system slower.

CPU vs GPU usage depends on your settings and resolution.
CPU basically sets the maximum FPS possible.
GPU sets the image quality.

When balanced you will see high CPU and GPU usage. If you increase the settings the GPU will show the higher load. If you lower the settings the CPU will see the higher load.

So lighter fast paced titles are more CPU dependent and nice looking AAA games are more GPU dependent. And if run a high resolution monitor at native resolution, then your CPU matters less.

Could potentially pick up an i7-8700k/8700 or i7-9700k/9700 for $100-125 on ebay to give it a little more life. But that would also mean a better cooler as well.

RTX 3060 is still a decent deal.

RTX4060 has better options from AMD in that price range. In a lot games the RX7600 will pull ahead for about $50 less. Or you can look at the RX6750XT which is a little more power hungry but faster in general. RTX4060 big advantage is DLSS and Ray Tracing though. I would argue that the lower end Ray Tracing performance is never worth it, but DLSS can make or break the FPS on newer games. AMDs FSR though does cover this gap, but just not quite as well.

Hmm okay, makes sense for sure.

I think with what he's noticing it likely is a GPU related issue for sure because his issue is explicitly related to him raising texture settings immediately bombing out his framerate. (Which makes sense, as his card is below the min required vRAM for the game anyways)

DLSS is probably by far the biggest selling point of Nvidia GPUs atm.. AMD are slowly bridging that gap so maybe in time we'll see them cross that margin lol. (Which he ofc doesn't currently have access to either on account of the GPU being non-RTX meaning he doesn't have DLSS anyway)

Though, his system is pretty budget in nature so AMD may be worth consideration from his POV to keep costs down... Definitely a good consideration point.

I think his current rig is really at a point of "anything is an upgrade" currently so I imagine RX7600 vs 3060 is likely to be a drastic improvement in performance regardless...

 

[logainofhades]

Yes there will be a bottleneck, imo, due to ram speed being forced to run at 2666. The 10400 suffered from such issues as well, and 10th gen really wasn't much different than 9th gen.

 

[Yeldur]

Yes there will be a bottleneck, imo, due to ram speed being forced to run at 2666. The 10400 suffered from such issues as well, and 10th gen really wasn't much different than 9th gen.

WOMP WOMP

That's unfortunate especially considering the board is I think limited to a max of 2666 lol

 

[geofelt]

Do you have a budget?

Presumably, the main use is for gaming.
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.
If the cpu is the limiter, the strongest upgrade would be to I9-9900K,
It sells on ebay for some $200. Probably not worth it.
To do better, the motherboard would have to be upgraded as well.

Some games need 16gb.
8gb is too small.

pcie 2/3/4 is not an issue. Performance differences, even with the strongest of graphics cards is minimal.

For a graphics upgrade, 450w is probably not sufficient.
CV units are not highly regarded.

 

[Yeldur]

Do you have a budget?

Presumably, the main use is for gaming.
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.
If the cpu is the limiter, the strongest upgrade would be to I9-9900K,
It sells on ebay for some $200. Probably not worth it.
To do better, the motherboard would have to be upgraded as well.

Some games need 16gb.
8gb is too small.

pcie 2/3/4 is not an issue. Performance differences, even with the strongest of graphics cards is minimal.

For a graphics upgrade, 450w is probably not sufficient.
CV units are not highly regarded.

Gotcha, the guy advises me his FPS hits rock bottom on Space Marine 2 the second he increases texture quality above the lowest level, so it definitely sounds GPU related more than anything.

It's sounding like the best place to start will be:

1) Better PSU (Avoid CV, 550/600 W sufficient?)
2) Better GPU
3) Better memory (or at least the best you can get within the limitations of this system board)

And then essentially work it from there. I think this was a very cheap pre-built budget build (costed him £750 total when purchased 4 years ago) so I expected some if not all components to be weak overall.

Unfortunately the budget is basically whatever is cheapest, he's not in a position where it would be ideal for him to drop major cash.

I think if he needed to do a rig refresh and just get something new he would, but the ideal option for him is basically:

1) Be able to play Space Marine 2 at decent enough graphical settings to have things look pretty at a decent FPS

2) Keep costs down as much as humanly possible.

 

[helper800]

That PC is practically a dead end for any upgrades because to get a new GPU you would need a new PSU and the platform is too old to get a reasonably priced CPU that would pair well with a modern GPU. Here is what I would consider to be a minimum viable PC for space marine 2. Where would parts be purchased?

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 8500G 4.1 GHz 6-Core Processor (€144.85 @ Cyberport)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler (€39.89 @ Caseking)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 EAGLE AX ATX AM5 Motherboard (€140.75 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 Memory (€94.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Western Digital Black SN770 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (€69.00 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Video Card: Gigabyte GAMING OC Radeon RX 7600 XT 16 GB Video Card (€339.79 @ Caseking)
Case: Lian Li LANCOOL 215 ATX Mid Tower Case (€69.00 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Power Supply: Corsair RM750e (2023) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (€105.60 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Total: €1003.87
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-09-07 06:05 CEST+0200

 

[Yeldur]

That PC is practically a dead end for any upgrades because to get a new GPU you would need a new PSU and the platform is too old to get a reasonably priced CPU that would pair well with a modern GPU. Here is what I would consider to be a minimum viable PC for space marine 2. Where would parts be purchased?

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 8500G 4.1 GHz 6-Core Processor (€144.85 @ Cyberport)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler (€39.89 @ Caseking)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 EAGLE AX ATX AM5 Motherboard (€140.75 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 Memory (€94.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Western Digital Black SN770 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (€69.00 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Video Card: Gigabyte GAMING OC Radeon RX 7600 XT 16 GB Video Card (€339.79 @ Caseking)
Case: Lian Li LANCOOL 215 ATX Mid Tower Case (€69.00 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Power Supply: Corsair RM750e (2023) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (€105.60 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Total: €1003.87
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-09-07 06:05 CEST+0200

Yeah this was sorta my fear but was what I was thinking really.

I think if he was likely to get a new rig, he would be buying a prebuild (He's not tech proficient at all, and would definitely not want to be putting a rig together)

UK based, so it would be UK retailers of some kind. I personally used pcspecialist.co.uk for my first parts-chosen-by-me-but-built-by-them rig before I ended up building my own..

Appreciate the feedback for sure 😛

As a query, rec specs from the developers mark 16GB memory as enough, in terms of your min spec you're saying 32, is there a specific reason for that?

 

[USAFRet]

As a query, rec specs from the developers mark 16GB memory as enough, in terms of your min spec you're saying 32, is there a specific reason for that?

Headroom for future needs.

Generally, with RAM, buy more today than you will need tomorrow.

RAM is sold as a set for a reason.
Getting 16GB now, and wanting to add another 16GB later, may not work.

 

[Yeldur]

Headroom for future needs.

Generally, with RAM, buy more today than you will need tomorrow.

RAM is sold as a set for a reason.
Getting 16GB now, and wanting to add another 16GB later, may not work.

Ah gotcha, okay yeah, figured it might be that but wanted to be sure.

 

[geofelt]

There is no such thing as "bottlenecking"
If, by that, you mean that upgrading a cpu or graphics card can
somehow lower your performance or FPS.
A better term might be limiting factor.
That is where adding more cpu or gpu becomes increasingly
less effective.
In this case, I suspect that the cpu is in the minimum required category and the prospective graphics card is in the recommended category.
https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/warhammer-40000-space-marine-2/23424

I am suspicious that the current i5-9400f may not be strong enough to generate the quality and frame rate of a strong graphics card.

While the corsair CV450 is not the best, it does have an 8 pin pcie graphics connector that a modest gpu upgrade might need.
Here is tom's gpu hierarchy chart to see what class various upgrades might fall into.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html


A 2 x 8gb ram kit is about $30 and would be a good first start , It could be used on a future build.

 

[Yeldur]

There is no such thing as "bottlenecking"
If, by that, you mean that upgrading a cpu or graphics card can
somehow lower your performance or FPS.
A better term might be limiting factor.
That is where adding more cpu or gpu becomes increasingly
less effective.
In this case, I suspect that the cpu is in the minimum required category and the prospective graphics card is in the recommended category.
https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/warhammer-40000-space-marine-2/23424

I am suspicious that the current i5-9400f may not be strong enough to generate the quality and frame rate of a strong graphics card.

While the corsair CV450 is not the best, it does have an 8 pin pcie graphics connector that a modest gpu upgrade might need.
Here is tom's gpu hierarchy chart to see what class various upgrades might fall into.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html


A 2 x 8gb ram kit is about $30 and would be a good first start , It could be used on a future build.

I gave SystemRequirementsLab a go but their info is actually just wrong, the specs they list are incorrect.

Here's what the actual min and rec specs are:

• MINIMUM:
  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows 10 (1903 min)/11 64-bit
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X / Intel Core i5-8600K
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: 6 GB VRAM, AMD Radeon RX 580 / Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060
  • DirectX: Version 12
  • Storage: 75 GB available space
  • Additional Notes: SSD required. 30 FPS in 1920x1080 with "Low" preset.

• RECOMMENDED:
  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows 10 (1903 min)/11 64-bit
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X / Intel Core i7-12700
  • Memory: 16 GB RAM
  • Graphics: 8 GB VRAM, AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT / Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
  • DirectX: Version 12
  • Storage: 75 GB available space
  • Additional Notes: SSD required. 60 FPS in 1920x1080 with the "Ultra" preset.

For some reason SRL is giving much lower min and rec specs to compare against (not entirely sure why, but either way, they're outdated and wrong)

Buuuut if anything that would only exemplify your point because the specs are only higher and requiring mroe power.

It's honestly sounding like the best movement forwards is going to be a new rig altogether because the current one isn't going to realistically be likely to be worth upgrading.

 

[Yeldur]

It's hard to pick what the best answer is here in all honesty because all of them were very helpful and all could be best answer, so I opted to spin a wheel because I'm inherently bad at picking these things.

Thanks to everyone who helped! All the information was very informative and helpful.