Question Should I upgrade my 4 yrs old CPU ? or just upgrade my GPU?

[radwan3]

Hi All,

I was considering upgrading my gaming PC which is 4 yrs old .. quite old ... I was thinking of just upgrading my GPU to Geforce 2080 or maybe 2070 super but I dont want my CPU to lag it behind and get terrible p[performance because of the CPU.

So, my pc specs are i7-4790k, sapphire r9 280x, corsair 16 GB DDR3, Asus H97-Pro Motherboard and 850 watts FSP power supply.

I mainly play Battlefield V and the new Call of Duty ... I would like to start playing these games on big screen TV and hopefully run 4K @ 60 FPS I lnow GPU upgrade alone wont help.

So which good CPU that will run good with new GPU for the next 4 - 5 yrs ? or my current CPU is sufficient and just upgrade the GPU ?

As for the budget I hope I can spend less than 400 USD on the CPU to keep some money for the rest of the hardware, I gotta make use of these Black Friday offers !!

 

[radwan3]

Oh, and one more thing ... should I upgrade my GPU only and wait as I read alot of ppl talking about new CPUs will be realsed soon ... so hopefully they would release somthing much powerful than what currently avialable in the market ? I noticed that my 4790k still performing good on 3d-benchmarks compared to the new generation CPU ... what do u think of that ?

 

[kanewolf]

You can't upgrade just your CPU you are at the max that generation offered. To do a CPU upgrade will require CPU+motherboard+RAM.

 

[radwan3]

You can't upgrade just your CPU you are at the max that generation offered. To do a CPU upgrade will require CPU+motherboard+RAM.

Yes I undestand that ... I will have to upgrade (motherboard and RAM) only if I decide to upgrade the CPU, which is the question .. should I upgrade CPU along the GPU ? or just GPU upgrade will be sufficient

 

[Danra]

A GPU alone will help, just not as much if it were married with a better CPU. Your GPU is choking the life out of game performance.

Currently 4K is more demanding on the video card than the CPU compared to 1080p or 1440p.

I play COD MW with all of the graphics turned up except ray tracing. The game is fluid and I get an average of about 200 FPS at 1080p. If I turn down a couple of settings to medium and leave the rest maxed out I get about 224 FPS at 1080p. If I overclock the video card GPU a little, to net me over 2000 on the core while gaming and 8300 on the VRAM then I easily average over 240 fps [the VRAM on my video card is outstanding]. And, the game runs smooth, as long as I have enough system memory [RAM]. The game is a pig when it comes to RAM and if you game for more than a few hours on your day off then the game can begin to "chug" unless you reboot your computer to free up the RAM, and that is with 32GB. Yes, it is a pain.

Note: I have a lot of garbage that normally runs in the background either disabled or removed from Windows 10 in order to improve gaming performance.

My system specs:
Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
Intel i7 7700K at 4.8GHz
MSI RTX 2080 Gaming X Trio
4x8GB RAM [32GB] 3200 CAS 14
1TB NVMe SSD
1TB SSD
4TB HHD
660 watt Seasonic Platinum power supply
MSI Optix AG32C 32" 1080p monitor, 165Hz
Internet: 12MBs down and 1.2MBs up

I would not trade high frames per second in shooters or racing games for 60Hz even if the screen was a $5000 8K TV. That is my personal preference though.

If you want to have a CPU last 5 years then you may want to wait until next year for the CPU, some Ryzen 4000 performance leaks put it at or above 15% better than the 3000 series, take that with a grain of salt though because that number has not been verified.

COD MW ultra RTX specs from their web site:

Ultra RTX Specifications

Here are the Ultra RTX specs to run the game at a high FPS in 4K resolution with Ray Tracing:
OS: Windows 10 64 Bit (latest Service Pack)
CPU: Intel i7-9700K or AMD Ryzen 2700X
RAM: 16GB RAM
HDD: 175GB HD space
Video: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER
DirectX: Version 11.0 compatible video card or equivalent
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible

So, currently an Intel i9 9900K looks like the best prospect for a 5 year build. Most people upgrade the video card every 3 or 4 years, so any CPU should be projected to outlast a video card.

Get a good 2080 now and watch your frame rates jump dramatically with your current CPU at 1080p or 1440p. A 2080 will struggle with 4K but it will work even if a few graphic settings need to be lowered a bit in demanding games.

This message is intended to help you in your thought process, that is my goal.

 

[vMax]

Just a GPU change from the R9 280X to the RTX 2070 Super or the 2080 Super will be a huge boost as both GPU's are very, very powerful and even though the once mighty Devil's Canyon 4890K is getting a bit long in the tooth it will still do a good job....Overclock the hell out of it!!!

Saying that, you will be bottlenecked but it will not be too bad. Finally it just depends on budget, yes if you go the whole hog with motherboard CPU, RAM and GPU then great but you can get away with it right now and then upgrade the CPU, motherboard and RAM later...

I currently use my RTX 2080 for 4K gaming and it is just great (expensive especially as I bought mine at the beginning), yes some games require me to drop the settings but I can get 4K 60FPS in PUBG, Project Cars, F1 2018 etc...and the RTX 2070 Super is just near or about there to the RTX 2080 and the RTX 2080 Super goes beyond..

For pure gaming on the CPU side the 9700K or 9900K or 3700X...

 

[radwan3]

Just a GPU change from the R9 280X to the RTX 2070 Super or the 2080 Super will be a huge boost as both GPU's are very, very powerful and even though the once mighty Devil's Canyon 4890K is getting a bit long in the tooth it will still do a good job....Overclock the hell out of it!!!

Saying that, you will be bottlenecked but it will not be too bad. Finally it just depends on budget, yes if you go the whole hog with motherboard CPU, RAM and GPU then great but you can get away with it right now and then upgrade the CPU, motherboard and RAM later...

I currently use my RTX 2080 for 4K gaming and it is just great (expensive especially as I bought mine at the beginning), yes some games require me to drop the settings but I can get 4K 60FPS in PUBG, Project Cars, F1 2018 etc...and the RTX 2070 Super is just near or about there to the RTX 2080 and the RTX 2080 Super goes beyond..

For pure gaming on the CPU side the 9700K or 9900K or 3700X...

Where can i compare CPU neck to neck ? I have used PassMark to compare i7 9700k vs R9 3800X and its shows huge difference favoring the Ryzen, however comparing both CPUs on "UserBenchmark" website favors the 9700k ...

I would allocate 350USD for a CPU ... but I got really dizzy comparing them ... to many options and flavors !

 

[vMax]

Here are the game reviews for the 9700K and the 3800X, it also includes most CPU's of today at various resolutions. The 3800X will beat the 9700K for productivity workloads like rendering, encoding etc anything that needs lots of cores and threads where as the 9700K will win on games and lighter threaded workloads...

Toms review:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-7-3800x-review,6226-5.html