[SOLVED] Worth upgrading my i5-3570k?

[danjm99]

I've been thinking recently that I might do a large upgrade on my pc. I got a 3GB GTX1060 6 months back after my old 7950 card started crapping out and there is certainly a performance improvement when I'm playing games, but certain games still feel only just about playable, notably DX Mankind Divided, Wildlands and Kingdome Come, all of which I've been playing recently.

Would anyone have any idea whether this older i5 I'm running is likely to cause a bottleneck with my video card? If so I'm trying to find a good replacement.

I was looking at an i5-9600k which seems to be a decent offering for gaming. I read somewhere that one of the 8 or 16 core AMD options (Ryzen 5 or a threadripper) may be a good choice, but for where games are at currently for multi-core optimization, from what I can gather from doing a little research, the i5 may be a better choice?

 

[Traditore]

1060 does not give above 60 FPS on ultra in mankind Divided in 1920x1080 even with i7 CPU. So there's your point of reference: if you already have 40-60 FPS on ultra then your CPU is enough and what seems 'just about playable' is the edge of your 1060 performance. If your FPS if way worse, like, never hitting 50-60, then a CPU upgrade will improve the experince.

 

[danjm99]

1060 does not give above 60 FPS on ultra in mankind Divided in 1920x1080 even with i7 CPU. So there's your point of reference: if you already have 40-60 FPS on ultra then your CPU is enough and what seems 'just about playable' is the edge of your 1060 performance. If your FPS if way worse, like, never hitting 50-60, then a CPU upgrade will improve the experince.

I probably only just get 40+ on medium/high settings. Sometimes under 30 under more demanding scenes.
Running at 2560x1440.

 

[Traditore]

1060 does not give above 60 FPS on ultra in mankind Divided in 1920x1080 even with i7 CPU. So there's your point of reference: if you already have 40-60 FPS on ultra then your CPU is enough and what seems 'just about playable' is the edge of your 1060 performance. If your FPS if way worse, like, never hitting 50-60, then a CPU upgrade will improve the experince.

I probably only just get 40+ on medium/high settings. Sometimes under 30 under more demanding scenes.
Running at 2560x1440.

at 2560x1440 it's a GPU bottleneck, CPU would make no difference.

I would overclock the CPU to a desirable 4.4GHZ, set resolution to 1920x1080. That way everything should be, let's say, balanced. The games you named are pretty demanding and 1060 is just OK to run them at 1920x1080 decently, and 3570k is an OK processor for 1080p gaming.

 

[DSzymborski]

Traditore hit the nail on the head here; your current performance problem is due to the fact that your GPU is underpowered for 1440p gaming on AAA games. And the VRAM is likely causing you additional problems at this resolution. Playing these types of games, a 1070 is the bare minimum for this resolution that I could recommend. A CPU upgrade will a good idea long-term, wouldn't fix this fundamental issue, so if your short-term goal is to play these games at this resolution, I'd be looking at a GTX 1080 or an RTX 2070.

 

[danjm99]

Traditore hit the nail on the head here; your current performance problem is due to the fact that your GPU is underpowered for 1440p gaming on AAA games. And the VRAM is likely causing you additional problems at this resolution. Playing these types of games, a 1070 is the bare minimum for this resolution that I could recommend. A CPU upgrade will a good idea long-term, wouldn't fix this fundamental issue, so if your short-term goal is to play these games at this resolution, I'd be looking at a GTX 1080 or an RTX 2070.

How about a 1070ti? Is this a good middle ground between the 1070 and 1080?
I only purchased my gtx1060 from work around 8 months ago and their returns policy is to simply exchange. Lets say it was to suddenly become faulty over the next few days, I could simply put another £200 towards a 1070ti.