New Budget Build or Upgrade?

[jmh547]

Between work and my other hobbies (wood working and audio) I took almost a year away from gaming and me personal computer in general. With the onset of short days and cold weather I took to a bit of gaming and immediately caught upgradeidus. I have a (very) limited budget (~$400) to play with...

I currently play Planet Coaster and COD:BO. COD:BO being an older game runs at 90+ FPS with no problems, i do have some lag spikes from time to time which i am guessing is due to only 8gb of ram. Planet Coaster struggles with large parks, my ram is typically maxed and CPU is running at nearly 100% but it is still playable.

I am looking to maybe get BFV, PUBG, or COD:BO4.

All games play is on a 60" 1080p 60hz tv, i have no plans or desire to update to 4k anytime soon.

Current Computer
MB: Asrock Extreme 3 Gen 3 Z68
CPU: i5-2500k @ 4.5Ghz
Ram: 2x2gb
SSD: 2x 120gb
HDD: 1x 240gb
PSU: OCZ 550w
GPU: GTX580

Option 1 ($390)
Replace GPU with GTX1070 ($340)
Add 2x 8gb gam ($50)
While this works with the budget i am concerned the dated 2500k will be a very significant bottleneck

Option 2 ($550)
MB:Asrock AB350 ($90)
Heatsink: NH-D9L ($50)
CPU: R5 2600 ($170)
Ram: 2x 8gb ($50)
GPU: RX580 ($190)
Reuse SSD, HDD, PSU, Case, etc.
My concern with this option, aside from my wife's reaction when she see the credit card bill, is i am not positive that the 2600 is that much better than my current CPU.

Thanks for your opinions!

 

[Zerileous]

To some extent that would be dependent on how many cores you can utilize (with gaming it won't be that many). The Userbenchmark comparison doesn't fully account for your overclock, although I'm sure there are plenty of overclocked systems in the pool. This is what I got when plugging your upgrade specs into thebottlenecker's "Bottleneck Calculator," accounting for a 30% CPU overclock. Not sure how they calculate their bottlenecks, but interesting to look at nonetheless.

Average bottleneck percentage: 21.19%
*This result is based on average CPU and GPU usage from different programs and games. It changes based on operating system, background processes activity and targeted applications. This result is not universal and changes based on differences in hardware and software enviroments. Please do not use this calculator primary as decision maker than as helping tool to understand performance correlations between different components.
Your processor is too weak for this GPU.
Core i5-2500K (Clock speed at 130%) with GeForce GTX 1070 (Clock speed at 100%) x1 will produce 21.19% of bottleneck. Everything over 10% is considered as bottleneck. We recommend you to replace Core i5-2500K with Ryzen 5 1600

Plugging your new build specs in yields:

Average bottleneck percentage: 78.47%
*This result is based on average CPU and GPU usage from different programs and games. It changes based on operating system, background processes activity and targeted applications. This result is not universal and changes based on differences in hardware and software enviroments. Please do not use this calculator primary as decision maker than as helping tool to understand performance correlations between different components.
Your GPU is too weak for this processor.
Ryzen 5 2600 (Clock speed at 130%) with Radeon RX 580 (Clock speed at 100%) x1 will produce 78.47% of bottleneck. Everything over 10% is considered as bottleneck. We recommend you to replace Radeon RX 580 with NVIDIA TITAN Xp

Here is the userbenchmark comparison for the old vs upgrade GPUs.

If it was me, and if DDR3 prices are reasonable (I think they are) I would upgrade the GPU now and CPU in a bit, possibly a Zen2 system. For good measure here is RX 580 vs GTX 1070

These are are just starting points for research really, best to look at FPS for games you play at the resolutions you want to play and see which can provide the FPS you want.

 

[trents]

Upgrading your video card and RAM amount is the crying need in this scenario. My only hesitation with what Zerileous recommended is the investment in old technology DDR3. The Rx580 is about the equivalent of the GTX 1060 and will play most modern games smoothly on high to Ultra settings at 1080p resolution. There is also the trend that games are increasingly relying on core count. Per core performance of the Ryzen CPU family is around 10% less than Intel 8xxx CPUs. Another factor is that AMD cards tend to perform better in DX12 games than the equivalent Nvidia product. But a GTX 1070 will trump that advantage with raw horsepower.

 

[jmh547]

First of all thank you both for your opitions! @Zerileous thank you for the time you put into your response and for pointing me to some "new" resources, most of these were not available or at least mainstream the last time I built or updated a computer.

I spent a substantial amount of time on UserBenchmark, bottlenecker, and reading forum posts.

UserBenchmark proved to be a very useful tool... It even pointed out that I have my two SSDs plugged into the SATA2.0 rather than the SATA 3.0 (DOH!)

Once I got a "good" benchmark of my computer (see below) I came to the conclusion that, despite it's age, the processor is actually quite capable. Based on the single core and quad core numbers of my processor (118 & 460) vs the R5 2600 avgerage (110 & 419), I struggle to believe I will be getting enough of a performance gain that warrant the money (or reduced money spent on the GPU)

My current ram has some really tight timings (9-9-9-24) but also a low bus speed. I think I am going to try to bump that up to 2133 and loosen the timing... I still feel like going to 16gb can only help and for ~$50 its is gamble I am willing to take.

UserBenchmarks: Game 34%, Desk 68%, Work 40%
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K - 88.3%
GPU: Nvidia GTX 570 - 28.3%
SSD (Boot): Kingston SV100S2128G 128GB - 19.1%
SSD (Games): Crucial M4 128GB - 57.3%
HDD (General Storage): Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB - 43.3%
RAM: Unknown F3-12800CL9-4GBSR F3-12800CL9-4GBSR 8GB - 61.9%
MBD: Asrock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3

I think I am going to go with option 1 and see how it goes. Thanks guys!

 

[trents]

Is this new RAM you are talking about? For 16gb of 2133 mhz DDR3, $50 is a great price. Where did you see it for that?

 

[jmh547]

I wish I could find a 16gb 2133 set for $50! My current set is 1600 with fairly tight timings (9-9-9-24) I am buying a matching set and overclocking them to 2133. If that is stable I may push higher. So I will end up with 4x 4gb

 

[trents]

Your first post says you only have 2x2gb of DDR3 1600. I went back and re-read the thread and see that you will try to overclock to 2133. I doubt you will be able to do that, especially using four modules. 1866 maybe. But you know, there is little to be gained in overclocking the RAM anyway from a real life performance perspective with i5 Intel chips in that generation. The CPU is just not starved for memory bandwidth since their are only four cores and since CPU cache is so large. The real benefit will come from increasing the amount of RAM.

 

[wingman99]

Games don't benefit much with increased memory speed. This is what I would go for upgrade Option 1 ($390).

 

[dman0999]

Just for reference, I recently updated my system for under $500 US. I had an Intel I7-870 with 8 GBs of DDR3 ram and a Nvidia GTX1060 3GB video card on a GIGABYTE MB. I upgraded to an AMD RYZEN 5 2600 and 16 GB G.Skill TridentZ RGB 3200 Ram on an Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming MB. I kept my Rosewill Challenger case, my Corsair TX650 PSU and the Nvidia GTX1060 3GB card, my 850 Evo SSD, my various HDDs and my Asus DVD burner. For the money I spent I am very impressed with the performance difference.

 

[DaveB]

Option 1 ($390)
Replace GPU with GTX1070 ($340)
Add 2x 8gb gam ($50)
While this works with the budget i am concerned the dated 2500k will be a very significant bottleneck

Option 2 ($550)
MB:Asrock AB350 ($90)
Heatsink: NH-D9L ($50)
CPU: R5 2600 ($170)
Ram: 2x 8gb ($50)
GPU: RX580 ($190)
Reuse SSD, HDD, PSU, Case, etc.
My concern with this option, aside from my wife's reaction when she see the credit card bill, is i am not positive that the 2600 is that much better than my current CPU.

Thanks for your opinions!

Option 2 is more like $600 as you're not getting 16GB of decent speed DDR4 or better for under $100. Since gaming is what you're focused on, the GP rules so go option 1 with the GTX 1070. Used ones on ebay go for $225 and up so you can save about $100 there.

 

[Jasonaaronfox]

I see some gskill ripjaws 2x4gb, 8gb ddr3 2133mgz for $39.95 shipped right now on eBay. You’re looking at $80 for 16gb at that speed I think.

 

[Keithn]

Between work and my other hobbies (wood working and audio) I took almost a year away from gaming and me personal computer in general. With the onset of short days and cold weather I took to a bit of gaming and immediately caught upgradeidus. I have a (very) limited budget (~$400) to play with...

I currently play Planet Coaster and COD:BO. COD:BO being an older game runs at 90+ FPS with no problems, i do have some lag spikes from time to time which i am guessing is due to only 8gb of ram. Planet Coaster struggles with large parks, my ram is typically maxed and CPU is running at nearly 100% but it is still playable.

I am looking to maybe get BFV, PUBG, or COD:BO4.

All games play is on a 60" 1080p 60hz tv, i have no plans or desire to update to 4k anytime soon.

Current Computer
MB: Asrock Extreme 3 Gen 3 Z68
CPU: i5-2500k @ 4.5Ghz
Ram: 2x2gb
SSD: 2x 120gb
HDD: 1x 240gb
PSU: OCZ 550w
GPU: GTX580

Option 1 ($390)
Replace GPU with GTX1070 ($340)
Add 2x 8gb gam ($50)
While this works with the budget i am concerned the dated 2500k will be a very significant bottleneck

Option 2 ($550)
MB:Asrock AB350 ($90)
Heatsink: NH-D9L ($50)
CPU: R5 2600 ($170)
Ram: 2x 8gb ($50)
GPU: RX580 ($190)
Reuse SSD, HDD, PSU, Case, etc.
My concern with this option, aside from my wife's reaction when she see the credit card bill, is i am not positive that the 2600 is that much better than my current CPU.

Thanks for your opinions!

If you go with the first option then the CPU will definitely bottleneck with GPU. So I will recommend you to go with second option