Question Need advice on what to upgrade

[MattxAn]

Ok, so I have;

I5 6600k overclocked to 4.4ghz
Gtx 980ti 6gb
16gb ddr4 ram
Use and SSD
Mobo is a gigabyte-z170-HD3P
Monitor is some generic 10 year old 60hz

Now, this setup can have me run most games on ultra/high, for sure. It’s a great setup, but there are some newer games starting to push this build. My issue is I don’t know what to update.

Example- anyone play Total war warhammer 2? I can have everything on ultra except anti aliasing and shadows (which I keep on ultra but can go to extreme, but this lags a ton). Game runs great at about 65 FPS, but once you start getting a ton of models on the battlefield, FPS can drop as low as 45-50 or so, especially if you zoom in.

On top of that, the models look...well, not bad, but not as great of course as people who have top of the line builds. Which is fine. I don’t expect perfection on a budget, but what’s the best bang for my buck to improve overall quality?

Some people I know have advised a new monitor since mine is a dinosaur of a lost age. I know 980Ti can push 4K, but notvery well necessarily. I know 1080ti or 2080 are the similar and are around 600 bucks each, but that’s a steep upgrade for me.

CPU wise my best in slot is I think an i7 7700k, which is like 400 bucks and offers only 15% improvement, which I’d be surprised if I noticed a lot.

Any advice would be great. Thanks all!

 

[pivodrums]

I would say, if you have OCed CPU it is still fine cause most games still make better use of CPU clock than cores. It is bound to change though. So yeah, you could upgrade cpu but with this mo-bo, as you figured out, you could max put i7-7700k (cca 15% improvement).
16gb ram is good, ssd is good
gtx 980ti is compared to 1070 which is still a very solid gpu.
So I would actually agree with your friends, your best upgrade would be 24" 1080p 144Hz 1ms monitor (around 210-230€ where I live), you will notice drastic improvement by actually seeing more than 60 fps.

 

[MattxAn]

I would say, if you have OCed CPU it is still fine cause most games still make better use of CPU clock than cores. It is bound to change though. So yeah, you could upgrade cpu but with this mo-bo, as you figured out, you could max put i7-7700k (cca 15% improvement).
16gb ram is good, ssd is good
gtx 980ti is compared to 1070 which is still a very solid gpu.
So I would actually agree with your friends, your best upgrade would be 24" 1080p 144Hz 1ms monitor (around 210-230€ where I live), you will notice drastic improvement by actually seeing more than 60 fps.

Thanks so much for the reply. Sounds like I have a good idea how to go forward! Lots of choices from what I’ve looked up so I’ll have to do some research on decent ones. Thanks again!

 

[pivodrums]

Thanks so much for the reply. Sounds like I have a good idea how to go forward! Lots of choices from what I’ve looked up so I’ll have to do some research on decent ones. Thanks again!

no problem mate, glad I could help

 

[Achaios]

I used to play TW too. Rome II TW. The solution for you is to heavily OC your CPU b/c TW games benefit tremendously from IPC performance.

4.4 GHz is too low an overclock for a Skylake. You get the IPC performance of an Haswell at this OC. Your CPU should be capable of 4.6-4.7 GHz at least.