Now 2600k, Still Got Bite Or Save To Upgrade

[AngelfireUk83]

Still running the SB 2600k and over the last 2 years I've upgraded the RAM from 8GB to 16GB and replaced recently a 9 year old Crucial 128GB SSD with a Crucial BX 240GB SSD for my Windows OS I mainly game at [email protected] if I can just wondering if I were to upgrade the GPU what would be the best one for my 2600k to get my res and decent better graphics on like GTA5 my girlfriend plays ARMA 3 which unfortunately is a single core game in this stay and age and it really doesn't seem to get any better even with the best CPU's.

I was even going to get the 3300X just so I could upgrade to DDR4, a modern board and PCI-E 3.0 since my 7950 3GB is PCI-E 3.0 which I know that there's not much different in 2.0 v 3.0.

I'm just stuck on what to do right now my budget is around £300 but that would change if I say sold my 2600k, board and DDR3 RAM then I could maybe upgrade a bit more like invest in a m.2 drive for games

 

[bmwbaxter]

At 1080P with your combo it is hard to tell which part is the bottle neck CPU or GPU.

If you were to upgrade to a 3300X it would ensure you aren't CPU bottle necked and can upgrade the GPU as your budget allows. The issue right now since the human malware hit most component prices are inflated a bit, but who knows when they will get back to normal. Also $300 is a tough budget for cpu mobo and ram. I would say save until b550 boards come out and the newer 3series XT chips drop and re-evaluate your options and maybe have a higher budget.

Biggest regret for my build was getting my NVME m.2 drive, for gaming and office tasks I can't tell a difference in load times between my rig and my gaming (m.2 sata) laptop. I do like the m.2 form factor cutting down on cable clutter. I would recommend getting a sata SSD in the m.2 form factor.

 

[Slayer2003]

I was recently in the same boat as you, sorta. 2500 instead of 2600k, and 1440 instead of 1080. Hard to say if a vid card will solve your issues, or you'll still hit a wall here n there. I've been through 3 or 4 different graphics cards over the life of this build to maximize its life, but, alas...

I tried for long enough though to stretch out my rig and bit the bullet on a new CPU/mobo/ram platform, as even my daily routines are starting to drag on this system. At idle with 4-8 Chrome tabs open CPU is ok, but memory is always over 60%, and now that I'm running [email protected] again my CPU sits at a constant 30-45% utilization, only working on a GPU unit. Now when I use Chrome with those 4-8 tabs open, page load times are laggy, link clicks even are slow to respond at times, it's just not a great experience anymore. Gaming gives similar results with stutters, dropped frames, etc.. I tried putting in a 1080ti from another machine in the house to see how much an improvement I would gain jumping to a better vid card until things settled down a bit in the market, and the improvements are 'meh' at best. Sure, higher frame rate in games, but CPU is pegged the entire time.

I wish NVME stuff would stop being marketed and parroted to people as a holy grail of disk speed increases. 90% of folks, if not higher won't even see a benefit of an NVME drive over a mid to top-tier SSD. Unless you are constantly working with HUGE data files, plain SSD is still where it's at, especially on $/GB. I got one for the reason stated above by bmwbaxter, less case clutter. Snag a larger SSD, either 2.5" or m.2 and call it a day on that end of things.

Honestly if you can wait a few months for supply shortages and price inflation to go down, I'd say do that. It will give you more savings time to increase your budget, and there's always something new coming out.

 

[trents]

If you overclock your CPU you would get some improvement. GTA is a CPU intensive game.

Unfortunately, you are at the place where upgrading just one component isn't going to have much impact. You really need to upgrade the CPU to something current which would require also upgrading the motherboard and the RAM to DDR4. Those three would have to be all done at the same time.

 

[Zerileous]

I think you're on the right path with the 3300x though, for the price it is hard to beat. It may not be long before the time when 4c/8t is not enough for gaming, but you'll have only spent $120 on the CPU and you'll have a platform where you can drop in an upgrade when needed.

If you're limited by resolution, i.e. 720p performs noticeably better than 1080p, then the GPU is a limiting factor and you could replace it first. However I think what people are trying to say is that you will just create a situation where the CPU is holding back the GPU. As trent's mentioned you might be able to stretch it with an OC, but I agree that a whole system upgrade will be better.

 

[AngelfireUk83]

So for 3300X parts

Ryzen 3 3300X
Gigabyte AMD B450 AORUS board
Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO Black 16GB 3200 MHz DDR4

Total = £310

Or a

Ryzen 5 2600
same board and ram as above

total = £334

But I've been seeing some charts and the 3300X even out performs the 2600 on some

 

[bmwbaxter]

As long as the b450 ships with a bios (F40 or newer) that support the 3300X you should be good. I assume by now they will be shipping with updated since f40 release in May of 2019, just something to watch out for.
I would try for the 3300X build, since it is more likely to run at your 3200mhz memory speed than the 2600 will.

 

[trents]

The 3300X will likely outperform the 2600 on games because of it's higher per core clock speeds but give some ground on multi-threaded apps because of lower core/thread count.

But I agree that the deciding factor in this case is RAM compatibility. The third gen Ryzen is more likely to work with your RAM's XMP speed.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

The 3300X will likely outperform the 2600 on games because of it's higher per core clock speeds but give some ground on multi-threaded apps because of lower core/thread count.

But I agree that the deciding factor in this case is RAM compatibility. The third gen Ryzen is more likely to work with your RAM's XMP speed.

Speaking about Ryzen, of course it will perform better. But I tested GTA V on my Athlon X4 860K. I wouldn't be surprised at all if even a Sandy Bridge would kill a Kaveri!
As my Athlon X4 860K was often near 100 percent CPU usage, IIRC.

 

[EarthDog]

Op... you need it all. That said, overclocking the 2600k as close to 5ghz as you can would help. A new video card would be beneficial too....which would then make your cpu more of a bottleneck than it already can be. Its time to upgrade it all.

But yeah, 3300x is a solid budget choice.... now get a better gpu.

 

[AngelfireUk83]

I'm saving up for the 3300X parts and I was looking into a XT5600 GPU would that be a good combo but what is also the NVIDIA equivalent

 

[bmwbaxter]

1660ti is below it and RTX 2060 is a touch ahead, from the frontpage review. They are priced accordingly, 1660ti <5600 XT <RTX 2060. I would go with an nvidia card since they normally have more mature/refined drivers.

 

[AngelfireUk83]

So this week I'll be sending off for the 3300X, board and RAM once I've got that all installed and sorted out and had a months trial time etc see how it runs I'll be then selling my 2600k 16gb DDR3 and Board and hopefully will get some money back to then use towards a GPU but by that point I should have more saved for a decent one. I'm not going to bother with a M.2 drive think I'll save up as time goes and replaced all my mech drives with 1TB SSD's and maybe use them for a NAS drive bay and get a network up and running (networks are my Achilles' heel lol)

 

[trents]

If your mechanical drives have lots of miles on them I would hesitate to redeploy them.

 

[bmwbaxter]

I wouldn’t stay away from m.2 the form factor I think is amazing for a nice clean rig. But for most stuff no sense going pcie nvme m.2 over Sata m.2

 

[AngelfireUk83]

Well there's been a bit of a happy change I've managed to actually also get a XFX RX580 8GB GPU as well I'm not playing games on the current rig and I've sold my 7950 3GB for £25 to a friend and scrapped up the rest to get the new GPU as well so new rig is....

Ryzen 3300X
Gigabyte B450 AORUS ELITE
Corsair 16GB Pro Black RGB 3200mhz RAM kit
XFX RX580 8GB GT GPU

If it all goes well and runs well I have a buyer for my old CPU, Board and RAM so I'll be getting a 256GB M.2 just for Windows 10 there are decent priced now

 

[bmwbaxter]

Should be a decent rig for 1080P gaming

 

[6th]

Hey there I happened to stumble across this post, You can easily get by using a 1660 super @1080p. I'm testing an Asus strix 1660 super for a streaming build for a family member on my 2600k at 4.6. The card runs most modern games past 60 frames. Having said that, I think it's not the greatest time to buy a video card considering both camps (Nvidia/Amd) will be releasing their new cards soon. I'm still deciding myself if I'm going to stay with intel or go with AMD.