Is this PC upgrade a good investment?
Is this PC upgrade a good investment?
Hi
I'm thinking about whether to upgrade my PC from the current setup (ryzen 7 3700x, 2060 super) to a ryzen 7 5700x and an XFX Radeon RX 7900 GRE. It's been a while since I replaced parts, and I'm wondering if this would be future-proof. Since I'm heading to university in a few months, I'm unsure if I'll still have the ability to play then, but I really want to get it back up after. Should I go ahead with the upgrade or wait five years?
-Senne
Upgrade for the issues you're facing.
What specific challenges are you encountering?
Why is a computer even necessary? What are the expectations?
Gaming should not be a priority.
For school, you need a system that supports course-related applications, is dependable, and durable.
In my opinion, nothing is completely future-proof.
Keep watching, reading, and assessing component products.
Save your funds.
It’s likely many changes will occur before you start school.
Check the courses you’ll take.
If software is needed, verify the hardware requirements to back those apps.
(Many schools provide discounts for course-specific programs.)
Set aside money for unexpected repairs.
It’s simpler and cheaper to buy a basic, working GPU than to invest heavily in a gaming one that won’t make much difference.
This is especially true if you live on campus where network speed and reliability can be limited.
Wait and observe.
Be patient—there’s no urgency here.
I'm not facing major issues, just that the games I enjoy are hard to play at 1440p right now. I'm thinking about upgrading now so I can play them longer, and I'm curious if this upgrade could help me in the future.
The bottleneck calculators are completely useless.
Modify the basic test I mentioned earlier and you'll see what results.
There isn't any such concept as future-proofing. Relying on that idea for an upgrade might not be wise, since something new could emerge next year that surpasses everything else (the Radeon 9700 Pro, 8800 GTX, Radeon HD 5870, and GTX 1080 TI are examples that come to mind). Still, the 7900 GRE would significantly enhance your setup compared to an RTX 2060, offering nearly three times more VRAM and double the performance. The 5700X isn't really a strong upgrade over the 3700X—it only provides about a 20% performance boost. You could achieve most of that by adjusting settings on the 3700X or using PBO. If you're considering an in-socket upgrade, I suggest going with a 5700X3D or 5800X3D. Alternatively, you can keep your 3700X for now; it remains a solid 1440P gaming chip and you shouldn't sacrifice much of the RX 7900 GRE's capabilities, which would be a huge improvement over your current RTX 2060. What major field are you planning to study in after school? Also congratulations!
Bottleneck calculators are not worth it, but a 3700x can handle a 7900 gre even at 1440p. After moving from a 3700x to a 5800x, I know you won’t get that extra 20% from clocks and PBO with a 3700x. The cache setup on the 3700x creates too much delay. That was the main advantage of the Zen3, especially with a unified cache versus the split cache that needed to go through infinite fabric. Swapping in a 5700x and trading in the 3700x makes sense here. A 5800x3d is fine, but unless you’re playing heavily CPU-intensive games like World of Warcraft, it won’t outperform a 5700x—except with a top-of-the-line GPU.