3700X and 5700: crazy or brilliant?!

[futurescotty]

Hey all,

I’ve been lurking and researching a lot for my $1000 budget PC.

So far I’m leaning towards a Ryzen 3600 and 5700 XT with modest parts for everything else.

BUT I had the realization after seeing a video about flashing the 5700 XT bios on a 5700, could I manage to do a 5700 with a Ryzen 3700X? And sure enough, I can get it to work for $1000.

What do you guys think about the 3700X/5700 build and overclocking/flashingBIOS versus the conventional pick of the 3600/5700XT?

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/futurescotty/saved/#view=jLmtpg


Pro

 

[Alaric]

Flashing a GPU to a higher tier card is always risky. There are lots of other bits on the PCB that may or may not be compatible. Using the exact same card/BIOS that you know has already been done successfully is a good start.

It comes down to priorities. If the performance of the 3700x is desirable or needed for tasks besides gaming then I could see trying to reflash the vBIOS. If gaming performance will be the main goal, I would just get the 3600/5700XT. My $.02

 

[wingman99]

+ 1 if the BIOS flash fails you will be out of the new graphics card.

 

[freakdiablo]

I think I saw in another thread you won't be able to flash a 5700 and get an XT, despite being able the jump from an AMD high tier to top tier card in the past. It'll raise the power limit however which would allow you to close the performance gap.

Still as Aleric and Wingman have stated, unless you know you need the 3700x you're better off getting a lower end CPU and the XT from the start, as then you don't have to risk flashing the card and know it's built to handle the extra power and heat loads.

 

[DaveB]

I think I saw in another thread you won't be able to flash a 5700 and get an XT, despite being able the jump from an AMD high tier to top tier card in the past. It'll raise the power limit however which would allow you to close the performance gap.

Correct, all the flash does is set the higher 5700 XT power limit so you can run the 5700 at 5700 XT speeds. You still are limited to the 2,304 Stream Processors (SPs) and 144 Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) that the 5700 comes with. The 5700 XT has 2560 SPs and 160 TMUs.

 

[AnimeMania]

It also depends on what resolution you are gaming at, the higher the resolution, the less important the speed that the processor is and the more important the speed the video card is.

 

[Kenrou]

 

[Woomack]

I was testing 5700 and XT and both these cards are pretty much the same at the same display resolution. On both you can play at 2560x1440 but 4k will be out of range. XT is, of course, faster but not so much. On the other hand, the XT doesn't cost so much more.
Btw. most 5700/XT have dual BIOS so you can flash it and recover in case of failure. Not all cards can be flashed so if you decide on that then read some about which card will be good.

In most games, it doesn't matter if you pick 3600 or 3700X. Maybe better will be 3600X for a higher clock and still cheaper than the 3700X.