Which is more important, CPU or GPU?

[jorghino1]

Should I upgrade my CPU & Motherboard or my GPU? It’s been awhile since I’ve upgraded my PC. Want to upgrade for gaming. My CPU is a i5 2400 and my Mobo is an ASRock z77 pro4 LGA 1155. My GPU is a gtx 660 ti. I want to upgrade my GPU to a RTX 2080.

 

[Phaaze88]

They are all equally important, as well as the monitor. A balanced system is best.
Adding just a 2080 to your current setup would lead to a terrible imbalance. To balance that out you would need to upgrade all at once, something like an I5 8400 or Ryzen 2600 build, at least a 1440p monitor, as well as the appropriate power supply - since it barely beats 1080ti, I would imagine at least 600w.

 

[velocityg4]

The GPU is more important. Why don't you spend an extra $100. Get yourself a used Core i7 2600K off eBay. You'll be able to overclock it. It'll actually make a pretty decent gaming CPU. Especially if you are going to be gaming at higher resolutions.

Higher resolution means lower FPS. So, a CPU is less of a limiting factor. An overclocked 2600K should handle that well enough.

 

[Ramlethal]

In therms of Gaming or Graphical Design : GPU is the most important part of your pc.
In therms of Multitasking and general usage of the PC: CPU is the most important

I would honestly recommend you to hold on the money and just save for a brand new PC build. Honestly when you upgrade your CPU you must aswel upgrade your Motherboard to a different socket and the Ram Memories in most of the cases.

Here is a comparisson between your CPU and a CPU of these days...
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-6600K-vs-Intel-Core-i5-2400/3503vs803

Any upgrade will be pointless for now, since your CPU is slow and it will bottleneck any descent top tier graphic cards of these days.
So... basically: To finish this off, Save all the money you can then sell your current PC for a couple more of bucks and just build a brand new PC.

You can always get an i7 2600k But it will be pointless since technology keeps advancing and you are just stopped on past generations processors so you will end up wasting more money than just purchashing a brand new pc of this gen.

 

[InvalidError]

The i5-2400 is no match for newer higher-end GPUs and many modern games are also far more CPU-intensive than games from 5+ years ago so the i7-2600k option may not buy you much extra life for your current motherboard and RAM. If you want to get the most out of modern games, you'll have to upgrade CPU+MoBo+RAM+GPU.