Should I upgrade cpu or gpu first?

[t3kn03]

Hello guys!
My current setup is:
Graphics Card: MSI GTX950 Gaming 2GB GDDR5
RAM: 2x Kingston 8GB DDR3 1600MHz HyperX Fury Black
CPU: Intel Core i5 4460 (3.2GHz)
Motherboard: MSI H97 PC Mate
I have a Crucial MX500 250GB SSD and a 1TB HDD and also a 144hz Monitor.

The main games I play are Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, Rainbow Six Siege, Call of Duty Black Ops 4 and Grand Theft Auto 5.

I'm going to upgrade because I can't play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with more than 120 fps with all low with this setup, I even overclocked the GPU to a stable point but nothing works to get Counter-Strike: Global Offensive fps back. I even started playing League of Legends again after a while away because I couldn't play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive well.

With this setup, should i upgrade GPU or CPU first?

If I upgrade GPU, I'm thinking to upgrade to a GTX 1070 Ti.
If I upgrade CPU, I'm thinking to upgrade it to a ryzen 7 2700X, and with that, change the motherboard to MSI X370 Gaming Plus and the ram to 2x G.SKILL Ripjaws V 8GB DDR4-3200MHz CL16.

Please help me and give your opinion, if you think i should upgrade into something else please say so, i'm open for sugestion.

Thank you!

 

[Hellfire13]

A better GPU can give you a good performance jump.
1060 is the highest you can go before limiting the card... https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Q7lIYRK5T0ABLvAkgbM_2jJGvbhlep27mR-eRcCy4FA/edit#gid=0
Still a good jump... https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-950-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1060-6GB/3510vs3639

 

[t3kn03]

A better GPU can give you a good performance jump.
1060 is the highest you can go before limiting the card... https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Q7lIYRK5T0ABLvAkgbM_2jJGvbhlep27mR-eRcCy4FA/edit#gid=0
Still a good jump... https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-950-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1060-6GB/3510vs3639

I will eventually upgrade everything later in the year, this upgrade is just for now while I get the money for the rest of it, but still its going to be like 9 months before i can buy everything. If I buy the 1070 Ti is it going to be worse than the 1060?

 

[Hellfire13]

In that case you can carry the 1070ti to your next build. But since this is mostly for gaming, the Intel current gen. CPUs would be better purchase. Specially the 8700k.

 

[t3kn03]

In that case you can carry the 1070ti to your next build. But since this is mostly for gaming, the Intel current gen. CPUs would be better purchase. Specially the 8700k.

I was thinking of buying the i7 8700k but it is a 100 euro price gap between the rysen 7 2700x and the 8700k, from what I have seen the fps difference is not that much at least in CS:GO, I was going for the 8600k but it only has 6 threads.
One thing, if the 1070 Ti is going to be bottlenecked, that does not mean that im going to have less fps than I have now right? :/

 

[Hellfire13]

Does not work that way. In layman terms, the 1070ti can give much more FPS with a CPU that can support it fully. But with a 4460 it will give you only as much as that CPU can support, which is definitely more than your current card.

 

[t3kn03]

Does not work that way. In layman terms, the 1070ti can give much more FPS with a CPU that can support it fully. But with a 4460 it will give you only as much as that CPU can support, which is definitely more than your current card.

Oh. Ok, thanks! See you some other time thank you for helping me and this fast, you were really helpful! Later I will update you on the build (if you want to).

 

[Hellfire13]

sure

 

[menlui]

Hi Hellfire13,

Your main issue with fps in CS:GO will probably not benefit from the 1070ti first as its almost entirely CPU bound so if you are going for more fps in CS:GO an upgrade to the 8600k/8700k would be a massive improvement, checking userbenchmark.com (I know its not perfect) your current specs come out at 129fps, your i5 with and 1070 (non-ti) is 158 fps and an i7700k (closest I could get) with the 950 is 180 fps. So a better CPU is almost double the fps gain on CS:GO and another factor is single thread performance with CS:GO as multi-threaded support isn't great so again an 8600k has 262 fps, an 9700k has 242 fps and a ryzen 2600 is 162 fps.

So I'd recommend a CPU/MOBO/RAM upgrade first purely for CS:GO, for the other games definitely a 1070ti.

 

[t3kn03]

Hi Hellfire13,

Your main issue with fps in CS:GO will probably not benefit from the 1070ti first as its almost entirely CPU bound so if you are going for more fps in CS:GO an upgrade to the 8600k/8700k would be a massive improvement, checking userbenchmark.com (I know its not perfect) your current specs come out at 129fps, your i5 with and 1070 (non-ti) is 158 fps and an i7700k (closest I could get) with the 950 is 180 fps. So a better CPU is almost double the fps gain on CS:GO and another factor is single thread performance with CS:GO as multi-threaded support isn't great so again an 8600k has 262 fps, an 9700k has 242 fps and a ryzen 2600 is 162 fps.

So I'd recommend a CPU/MOBO/RAM upgrade first purely for CS:GO, for the other games definitely a 1070ti.

I play other games too now, mainly Call of Duty Black Ops 4, I'm not that addicted to CS:GO anymore, I was going for the GPU upgrade because I am not going to only play CS:GO, even if I couldn't play CS:GO I would just wait until I fully upgrade the whole pc and start playing it again. But, as I said I am now playing more League of Legends, and as far as I know League is a CPU bound game, and I am starting to get really addicted to League right now, with my current build I give most 100 fps all medium and shaders off, so im just going to upgrade the CPU and go with it until I upgrade the rest, I'll mostly play CS:GO and League so CPU will be good to go. Thank you for pointing that out.
I think I will be going for the i7 8700k or the 8086k or the ryzen 7 2700k (if im going on a budget).
Thank you.

 

[Hellfire13]

Hi Hellfire13,

Your main issue with fps in CS:GO will probably not benefit from the 1070ti first as its almost entirely CPU bound so if you are going for more fps in CS:GO an upgrade to the 8600k/8700k would be a massive improvement, checking userbenchmark.com (I know its not perfect) your current specs come out at 129fps, your i5 with and 1070 (non-ti) is 158 fps and an i7700k (closest I could get) with the 950 is 180 fps. So a better CPU is almost double the fps gain on CS:GO and another factor is single thread performance with CS:GO as multi-threaded support isn't great so again an 8600k has 262 fps, an 9700k has 242 fps and a ryzen 2600 is 162 fps.

So I'd recommend a CPU/MOBO/RAM upgrade first purely for CS:GO, for the other games definitely a 1070ti.

A 4th gen. i5 is still a good cpu for gaming and many people are still using the same. I showed the least expensive option that can work with the current setup.going towards the more expensive upgrades.
While you showed the most expensive path going towards the least expensive one.
Either way he reaches the same place the the setup completes. The point is, if a 1060 can give him the gameplay that he is satisfied with, by the time he saves for the larger upgrade, there might be better or cheaper parts available at his disposal down the line.

 

[t3kn03]

I thought about it and I have not come by the right answer. I would like to have the GPU upgraded first but i thought a bit about it and I remembered that black friday is really close. That means discounts. What i thought of doing was buying the most expensive first because of the huge discounts of black friday. I have a budget of 500€ for next month. So i thought of going for the processor since its the one where i needed to spend more because of motherboard and cpu and cooler and the ram. But, yesterday I tried to overclock my GPU again, but this time with more knowledge. When I overclocked it to a stable state that was good enough, with that I got the 60 fps on black ops 4 and i got the fps I needed at csgo to enjoy the gameplay. But I have not made up my mind, if I was going for the CPU it would only be for csgo and cpu intensive games but as I said I can now play them fine. As for tue GPU as I OC my graphics card I saw the huge difference that the GPU made. I don't know what to do now. But now i'm more tempted to go for the GPU (1070 Ti) and then go for a better CPU but if I upgrade CPU now, I may later buy a better GPU like a 2070 or even a 2080.

 

[Hellfire13]

I would say, if you are satisfied with your gameplay, then hold on to the upgrade as long as you can. Or just get a 1060 for better fps. Because by the time this setup runs out, you will have better options to buy.
But if you want a better setup for gaming, a hexacore would be a good option in 2018. CSGO has no need for multithreading...

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-9600K 3.7GHz 6-Core Processor ($259.00 @ Walmart)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master - MasterLiquid ML240L RGB 66.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte - Z390 GAMING X ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($143.17 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill - Aegis 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($114.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $577.15
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-10-26 02:08 EDT-0400

 

[t3kn03]

My only problem here is that this setup might be good for black ops or csgo but in rainbow six siege I cant play that well. Or even in gta v. And I live in Portugal, wish prices were those. The place where things here are the cheaper are "pcdiga.com".

 

[Hellfire13]

but in rainbow six siege I cant play that well.

Not sure what you mean. That is still a 6 core processor. Should crush through R6S/GTA5. If you want multithreaded option, you can go with the Ryzen 2600.

 

[t3kn03]

And yes I would really like to go for the multithread, thats why I was thinking of i7 8700k or the ryzen 7 2700X, the 100€ difference between them does not make me a difference but still is it worth the 100€?

 

[Hellfire13]

Only a handful of titles for now. But could be useful down the line when more games start using multiple threads.

 

[t3kn03]

I still have to do the decision, gpu or cpu first? If I go cpu I might go for the i7 8700K or the ryzen 7 2700x and then later when upgrading the GPU, buying a RTX 2070 or a 2080. If I go for gpu I go for the 1070 Ti and I get later maybe a i9 9900k if some prices go down a bit. What do you think?

 

[Toxic_Cobra]

GPU first, you'll see noticeable improvement and you should just wait for the new cpus

 

[Hellfire13]

Get the GPU first.

 

[t3kn03]

Thank you all! Later when I buy the gpu and even later when I buy the CPU ill do an update on you guys!

 

[t3kn03]

Update on you guys, just bought the 1070 ti and had to buy a 650W psu as well, bought the cooler master MWE 80+ bronze.