What should I upgrade first?

[hussicr7]

Hey guys, so I have been thinking about upgrading my pc for a while but I am not sure what to upgrade first.
My specs are:
GPU: GTX 960
CPU: Intel core i5 6402p 2,8 ghz
RAM: 8gb ddr4
PSU: vs550

I have been playing escape from tarkov a lot, a game where I hear cpu and ram is really important, but I am not sure.
I was thinking of upgrading my gpu to a gtx 1060, my cpu to I5 8400 and an extra 8gb ram to get 16gb total. But I am not sure what is best to start with?
Hope you guys can help

 

[Corwin65]

FYI if you go with an Intel 8xxx series you will need a new motherboard.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Your best bet would be to upgrade your GPU first. Your CPU is higher than recommended and you have the recommended amount of RAM. To upgrade your CPU to an i5 8400 you would need a new motherboard. If you have a 270 series motherboard you can upgrade to a 7 series, but that isn't really much of an upgrade.

 

[hussicr7]

Alright thanks for the help, my motherboard is a B150, so I will just upgrade my GPU to a gtx 1060 for now, and then I will probably buy a new motherboard in the future with a i5 8400 cpu or better.

 

[geofelt]

Alright thanks for the help, my motherboard is a B150, so I will just upgrade my GPU to a gtx 1060 for now, and then I will probably buy a new motherboard in the future with a i5 8400 cpu or better.

Likely, a good plan, depending on the types of games you play.

Some games are graphics limited like fast action shooters.
Others are cpu core speed limited like strategy, sims, and mmo.
Multiplayer tends to like many threads.

Run YOUR games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
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.

 

[hussicr7]

Alright thanks for the help, my motherboard is a B150, so I will just upgrade my GPU to a gtx 1060 for now, and then I will probably buy a new motherboard in the future with a i5 8400 cpu or better.

Likely, a good plan, depending on the types of games you play.

Some games are graphics limited like fast action shooters.
Others are cpu core speed limited like strategy, sims, and mmo.
Multiplayer tends to like many threads.

Run YOUR games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
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.

I do get a bit better fps if I lower the overall graphics quality. The game I play mostly is escape from tarkov, from what i see from the forum of the game, people say it's a ram and CPU heavy game. But if I would have to upgrade my CPU, I am not sure if it's best for me to buy a new motherboard with the i5 8400 or just buy the i5 7600k.

 

[geofelt]

If your motherboard is capable of overclocking, the 7600K makes a lot of sense.
You can get quite high single thread performance.

 

[hussicr7]

If your motherboard is capable of overclocking, the 7600K makes a lot of sense.
You can get quite high single thread performance.

I have a b150 motherboard, not sure if it can overclock, but don't think so. A new mb with the i5 8400 would maybe be best for me. Also I think the prices for the gpu gtx 10 series will probably drop when they release the new graphics cards, and that's probably when I should buy a 1060.

 

[geofelt]

You can not overclock a K processor on a B150 motherboard.
But... i5-7600K is still a reasonable upgrade.
Your games are likely more single traded and cpu limited.
Your 6420P has 4 threads and a passmark rating of 7108 and a single thread rating of 1899.
A i5-7600K has 4 threads also and a rating of 9143 and a single thread rating of 2386, a nice boost.
But, check the support list for the motherboard. You may need a bios update to run a 7600K, even at stock.

I5-8400 is a very good mid range gaming processor with 6 threads and a rating of 11711/2335.
It's effectiveness compared to a 4 thread cpu will depend on how many threads your games can effectively use. Not many need more than 4 threads.

How can you tell how many threads are effective?
Task manager will not tell you.
Windows will spread the activity of a single thread over all available threads.
So, if you had a game that was single threaded and cpu bound, it would show up on a quad core processor as 25%
utilization across all 4 threads.
leading you to think your bottleneck was elsewhere.
It turns our that few games can usefully use more than 2-3 threads.
How can you tell how well threaded your games or apps are?
One way is to disable one thread and see how you do.

You can do this in the windows msconfig boot advanced options option.
You will need to reboot for the change to take effect. Set the number of processors to less than you have.
This will tell you how sensitive your games are to the benefits of many threads.
If you see little difference, it tells you that you will not benefit from more cores.
Likely, a better clock rate will be more important.

When a new generation of graphics cards launch, you may get a nice price on old cards on the used market.
That is when individuals sell their old cards to but the new ones.
But if you are buying new, great savings are not going to be there, they will sell on a reasonable price/performance curve.