[SOLVED] Worth upgrading cpu?

Mellor81

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Jul 21, 2015
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Im upgrading my pc a little so i can give most of my parts to my son, im currently running a:
Gigabyte b450m gaming mobo
Corsair TX650w gold psu
Ryzen 5 3600 cpu
Gigabyte 1660 super gaming OC
Corsair vengeance LPX 3600 16GB RAM

Ive just purchased:
Corsair vengeance RGB pro 3600 32gb
Corsair HX850 850 W Full Modular 80 Plus Platinum And
A Gigabyte 3070ti gaming gpu

So i can give him my GPU, RAM and PSU.

What i have worked just fine for what i used it for, sims 4, microsoft flight sim on high to ultra settings and general pc stuff, so do you guys think i would get any benefit at all to upgrading the cpu or stick with the one i have given ive upgraded to a far better gpu, i was planning on a ryzen 9 5900X but if it isnt going to really benefit me for the price…
 
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yeh light gaming is my primary use, i was just thinking if im going to a new one try and future proof a little but ill take your advice and find one a little lower
AMD has certainly pushed up core counts with Ryzen and Intel was forced to follow. That's not a bad thing, but we've generally overshot what's necessary/usable by games. Most games are primarily designed for consoles first and therefore utilize 4-8 threads (modern games being more comfortably in the 6-8 thread range, with some outliers). If you're looking at CPU gaming benchmarks, keep in mind that IPC [instructions per clock], frequency, and cache size are all factors in game performance that aren't necessarily pointed out in reviews. You'll typically see the...

Mellor81

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Jul 21, 2015
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5700X is going to be your best Ryzen gaming CPU in terms of price/performance. No reason to go with a 5900X unless you know you'll be using the coarz for something other than gaming.

I'd probably hold off until this fall and get a Ryzen 7000 on the AM5 platform.

yeh light gaming is my primary use, i was just thinking if im going to a new one try and future proof a little but ill take your advice and find one a little lower
 
yeh light gaming is my primary use, i was just thinking if im going to a new one try and future proof a little but ill take your advice and find one a little lower
AMD has certainly pushed up core counts with Ryzen and Intel was forced to follow. That's not a bad thing, but we've generally overshot what's necessary/usable by games. Most games are primarily designed for consoles first and therefore utilize 4-8 threads (modern games being more comfortably in the 6-8 thread range, with some outliers). If you're looking at CPU gaming benchmarks, keep in mind that IPC [instructions per clock], frequency, and cache size are all factors in game performance that aren't necessarily pointed out in reviews. You'll typically see the playing field level off once you reach/exceed 6C/12T (Ryzen 5600X or Intel i5). Past that, the gains are primarily not/less because of additional cores.

Granted that's the CURRENT games landscape, and certainly the situation can/will evolve with time. But there's absolutely a point of diminishing return for CPU workload parallelization (core count scaling/efficiency) in game programming. While yes, a lot of the core count scaling legwork is handled on the game engine side of things, no matter where the development is happening they have a time and money budget and they also know how many CPU cores/threads the MAJORITY of gamers have. If you spend more time/money on one thing, you are afforded less for another. Do you spend more time increasing performance by scaling to thread counts in excess of the majority, or optimize the engine to provide better performance per core which would affect everyone? People like to rag on Intel stalling out on core counts, but ignoring AMDs inability to compete until Ryzen....2000, Intel was offering 4c/8t on the consumer platform all the way back in 2009 and while performance per core has absolutely improved by leaps and bounds since, we still haven't gone very far past that point of thread utilization in games, even after the proliferation of online/multiplayer gaming.

For that reason, I feel like 8C/16T like the 5700X or 5800X3D (since we're talking AMD) or whatever similar core count Ryzen 7000 is going to be pretty "future proof" in regard to gaming. The higher core count options have largely cannibalized the "prosumer" lineups from Intel/AMD (Threadripper, LGA2066 etc), and that's really the workloads they're best used for.
 
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Mellor81

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Jul 21, 2015
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10,535
AMD has certainly pushed up core counts with Ryzen and Intel was forced to follow. That's not a bad thing, but we've generally overshot what's necessary/usable by games. Most games are primarily designed for consoles first and therefore utilize 4-8 threads (modern games being more comfortably in the 6-8 thread range, with some outliers). If you're looking at CPU gaming benchmarks, keep in mind that IPC [instructions per clock], frequency, and cache size are all factors in game performance that aren't necessarily pointed out in reviews. You'll typically see the playing field level off once you reach/exceed 6C/12T (Ryzen 5600X or Intel i5). Past that, the gains are primarily not/less because of additional cores.

Granted that's the CURRENT games landscape, and certainly the situation can/will evolve with time. But there's absolutely a point of diminishing return for CPU workload parallelization (core count scaling/efficiency) in game programming. While yes, a lot of the core count scaling legwork is handled on the game engine side of things, no matter where the development is happening they have a time and money budget and they also know how many CPU cores/threads the MAJORITY of gamers have. If you spend more time/money on one thing, you are afforded less for another. Do you spend more time increasing performance by scaling to thread counts in excess of the majority, or optimize the engine to provide better performance per core which would affect everyone? People like to rag on Intel stalling out on core counts, but ignoring AMDs inability to compete until Ryzen....2000, Intel was offering 4c/8t on the consumer platform all the way back in 2009 and while performance per core has absolutely improved by leaps and bounds since, we still haven't gone very far past that point of thread utilization in games, even after the proliferation of online/multiplayer gaming.

For that reason, I feel like 8C/16T like the 5700X or 5800X3D (since we're talking AMD) or whatever similar core count Ryzen 7000 is going to be pretty "future proof" in regard to gaming. The higher core count options have largely cannibalized the "prosumer" lineups from Intel/AMD (Threadripper, LGA2066 etc), and that's really the workloads they're best used for.

wow what a fantastic informative reply, extremely appreciated, i have come across just today a ryzen 5 5600X for a mere £190, i think thats what ill go for for now as its a good upgrade and as you say will leave me options to upgrade elsewhere price wise, a good decision?
 

punkncat

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A part of this that would be in play to me would reside with whether freeing up the 3xxx Ryzen is going to be a drop in upgrade path for the other PC you are refreshing.

If not, I would probably wait being this close to launch and some time to read the market between. This way you can make a whole platform update and have the CPU/mobo combo to trickle down.
 
I have a 3080 so very close to a 3070Ti. Going from a 3700x to 5800x3D was a fairly decent upgrade paired with my 1440p 240Hz monitor. It’s not a massive improvement but still quite noticeable.

I do get what you mean I recently went from a 3700x to a 5900X and yes it's noticeable, but more for smoothing out the lows.

In this instance with what the OP is proposing though, I'd probably only upgrade if I was also going to upgrade cores like with a 5800x/5900x/5950x, or cache and cores like with a 5800x3d.
 
A cpu upgrade sees like a good idea.
But, I see no urgent need to do so.
See how your 3600 works out for the games YOU play.
Upgrading to a 5000 series processor is easy.
As above, most games can not make effective use of more than 4-8 threads.
The exception might be multiplayer with many participants.
You now have sufficient with 12.
The benefit will come from better single thread performance.
Run the cpu-Z bench test on your current setup.
You should score about 515:
https://valid.x86.fr/bench/ptjz47
Can your son use the 3600?
If so, look at the intel 12th gen processors.
 

Karadjgne

Titan
Ambassador
L3 cache. It's the biggest advantage the higher end cpus have, as well evidenced by the 5800x3D taking significant advantage and putting a revamped 2yr old cpu up against the 12900k, and in some cases beating it.

Cores, IPC, L3, clock speeds, ram speed etc. May not mean much individually and may have limitations, but like nickles and dimes, they still add up pretty quick when combined.

5700X for its price and only 2-5% behind the larger needs 5800x, is a bargain. Especially when that performance difference is easily nullified with a couple of tweaks.
 

Kona45primo

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Jan 16, 2021
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I'd hold off as long as you can, new gpu should keep you pretty satisfied for a while. Wait until the new AM5 chips drop. That's going to tell you if it's worth the new chips or not.

CPU's aren't going to go up in price in the mean time... Just cheaper, so wait as long as you can.

Of course if you can sell your 3600 for close to what you can get an upgrade for... That's not a terrible idea either. But I wouldn't be in a rush.
 
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