[SOLVED] Upgrade for i7 3770

[lelele688]

Hi,

I'm currently running an i7 3770 with a GTX 1060 and 8gb of ram. I wanted to upgrade to 16gb and an RX 5700, RTX 2060 or something similar.
Now my question is, should I just keep the i7 3770 and spent money on overpriced DDR3 or get something new (mobo, cpu and ram).

It's basically 60$ on DDR3 vs. 250ish$ on CPU, DDR4 and a new motherboard.

Basically everything I do (that is somewhat heavy) is playing game. And a lot of them aren't particularly CPU heavy.
Right now I'm fine with what the 3770 can do. Don't know how that's going to be after the GPU upgrade, though.
I thought about maybe going with a Ryzen 3 3300x or 5 2600. Something like the 3600 is (at least around here) outside my budget.
Would those CPUs make that big of a difference in games? Would getting 2 extra cores even make sense when I could get higher single core frequency?

Or what budget CPU makes a big enough difference to really be worth it?
Thanks a lot everyone!

 

[InvalidError]

Replacing one quad-core CPU with SMT with another similarly-clocked quad-core CPU with SMT won't help you much, so a CPU+MoBo upgrade won't really be worth it until you can afford at least a hex-cores. If you are still happy with what you have, then I'd say take the 16GB of DDR3 and stretch your system out into next year. Then you'll likely make more than the $60 you spent on DDR3 back on reduced prices on newer CPUs, motherboards and GPUs.

Once the RTX3000 series become available for retail, you can expect prices on RTX2000-series and older GPUs to drop quite a bit. I'd definitely wait a few more weeks for those drops before buying a GPU as these could be the largest drops in a very long time, especially if you keep an eye on the used market.

 

[lelele688]

Replacing one quad-core CPU with SMT with another similarly-clocked quad-core CPU with SMT won't help you much, so a CPU+MoBo upgrade won't really be worth it until you can afford at least a hex-cores. If you are still happy with what you have, then I'd say take the 16GB of DDR3 and stretch your system out into next year. Then you'll likely make more than the $60 you spent on DDR3 back on reduced prices on newer CPUs, motherboards and GPUs.

Once the RTX3000 series become available for retail, you can expect prices on RTX2000-series and older GPUs to drop quite a bit. I'd definitely wait a few more weeks for those drops before buying a GPU as these could be the largest drops in a very long time, especially if you keep an eye on the used market.

You're probably right. The Ryzen 5 2600 I listed would be a 6 core CPU that's available and in my budget. Do you think that one would make sense as an upgrade? Or rather wait till the Ryzen 3000 series gets cheaper and get that one?

And yeah, I'm definitely going to wait a few more weeks before getting a new GPU.

Thanks again!

 

[InvalidError]

For gaming, the Ryzen 3300X is roughly equal to the 2600 due to most games favoring faster cores so if you want a solid all-around CPU upgrade, I'd recommend waiting for the 3600 to get cheaper.

 

[Karadjgne]

Ebay. Take your chances on a 8Gb upgrade, or just buy 16Gb outright, either way it'll not be close to $60.

 

[lelele688]

Ebay. Take your chances on a 8Gb upgrade, or just buy 16Gb outright, either way it'll not be close to $60.

Sadly DDR3 has become more expensive than DDR4. Therefor it would be around 60$ used on Ebay.

 

[lelele688]

For gaming, the Ryzen 3300X is roughly equal to the 2600 due to most games favoring faster cores so if you want a solid all-around CPU upgrade, I'd recommend waiting for the 3600 to get cheaper.

Alright, I see. Thanks for the help!

 

[InvalidError]

Sadly DDR3 has become more expensive than DDR4. Therefor it would be around 60$ used on Ebay.

Not quite as painful as $400 for 16GB of DDR2 back when 8GB wasn't enough for me on my Core2Duo. For only $100 extra, I ended up getting my current PC - i5-3470/H77M/32GB.

Only put as much money in an old platform as you think you'll save on your subsequent upgrade and only if it solves the main reasons you want to upgrade.

Personally, having tons of spare RAM is one of the key reasons I can still bear my i5-3470 - it may not do anything fast but I can beat the snot out of the CPU and it still alt-tabs so I can go do other stuff like a champ since it hardly ever needs to touch the swapfile. For me, greatly reduced swapping goes a long way toward stretching how long I can keep a PC. Hopefully you'll like it as much as I do if you choose to get 16GB.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Go ahead and upgrade ram to 16gb and hold there. I think ryzen 4000 should come out relatively soon, so at that time the ryzen 5 3600 should drop in price.