Wife loves ARK
Wife loves ARK
She loves playing Ark and I like improving PCs. With limited funds, we're preparing for Black Friday and Christmas. She's currently using a pre-built system with an i5-7400, 16GB RAM (the fastest I could fit in her motherboard), and a 1060 3GB graphics card. I just bought her a new CPU cooler and SSD, but I'm wondering if upgrading the CPU will make a bigger difference than upgrading the GPU to either a 1660 or 570/580. She has two 1080p 60MHz monitors with freeSync. Should I consider upgrading the CPU? What do you think about the GPU?
A 1660 would offer a solid improvement over a 1060 with 3GB, though the CPU aspect doesn't see much change since ARK isn't recognized for heavy threading. For a modest performance boost, an i5 6600 available on eBay at a reasonable cost could be a good choice.
the psu is a thermaltake smart 600 w, and the mobo is an msi b250m bazooka
The PSU doesn't reach even 80+ bronze standards (just 80+ which is the lowest acceptable for not being entirely useless), which isn't ideal. The motherboard is quite basic. Given your limited budget, the 1660 should work well as a replacement for the 1060 3GB, according to Fasa's advice. I'd favor it over the 570/580 models. It consumes about 65W less than the RX 580 while offering better performance, despite having 6GB of VRAM compared to the RX 580's 8GB.
No reason whatsoever to upgrade anything when gaming on a 60 Hz 1080p monitor with your current hardware. All a 1660 is going to be is 20% faster and allow you to bump up a few graphics settings since it's double the vram. My opinion on the 1060 3GB on a 60 Hz 1080p monitor is that it's a BEAST. I had an excellent gaming experience with it before I went to a 1440p 144 Hz monitor. Even in ARK. What you need to do if you haven't already is just customize the hell out of graphic settings. In fact, the 1060 3GB taught me a LOT when it comes to customizing graphic settings. You learn which settings hit vram and which settings don't. You learn which settings hit fps the most and which settings barely hit fps. You learn which settings affect visual fidelity the most and which settings barely even affect visual fidelity.
0.3 GHz I wouldn't exactly consider to be a "nice" bump in speed. A small bump in performance you nailed though. And I mean really small.
Everyone has the right to their own viewpoint, along with their personal gaming history. It's minimal in terms of gaming, particularly in ARK. Most titles usually offer a performance increase between 4 and 11 frames per second. That kind of improvement doesn't justify the cost, in my opinion.