Question System Upgrade Advice

[SpaceWizardNinja]

So I wanted some advice and clarification. What I have; Mobo - MSI Z390 LGA 1151, CPU - i59600K, 32Gb of DDR4, 850W Corsair +gold and RTX 2070. What I'm looking to do is upgrade to an RX 6950XT. Correct me if I'm wrong, but my motherboard is pci-e 3.0 and cannot run that card as its 4.0? Additionally, an 850W is dangerously close to not enough umph for that card and I should be looking at 1000W to be safe. So to upgrade this card I'll need a new MOBO, CPU and PSU and probably some DDR5 because y not......... I'm looking to get cyberpunk, mod it a bit and play it on my shiny new 4K TV, I'm thinking my 2070 Aero (transplanted from my last build in a SFF case) with one fan wont be able to handle that without a significant drop in settings. Thought? Ideas? Concerns for my savings?

 

[Lutfij]

You can, it's backwards compatible.

MSI Z390
MSI have a number of Z390 chipset boards, which one are you working with?

850W Corsair +gold and RTX 2070
How old is the PSU and that's the only discrete GPU it's powered during it's service?

 

[SpaceWizardNinja]

Well that's awesome 🙂 will the pci-e 3.0 bottleneck to a noticable degree given them card?

MSI MPG Gaming Pro Carbon AC and the PSU has only powered this system and that one GPU for it's life, about 3 years.

 

[geofelt]

pcie is forward and backwards compatible.
Only the very strongest of graphics cards show any difference in performance between pcie2.0,3.0,4.0. Think low single digits.

But, for many games, you will be limited by your cpu.
Try 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.

Games will mix being cpu limited(mostly single thread) and being graphics limited. GPU is what you want for fast action gaming and high resolutions.

If you are cpu limited, look for strong single thread cpu performance.
Run the cpu-z bench and look at the single thread rating.
A 9600K should score 592:
https://valid.x86.fr/bench/akzkcv/1