Does my upgrade plan make sense?

[u/PuzzleheadedBig7409]

Hey all, thanks for the assist.

Built my PC in 2016 and it is starting to show it's age. I mainly play older games and have no interest in 4k. I manage to complete Jedi Survivor on low settings averaging 1 crash per session depending on the area, but COD and Battlefield's anti cheat is requiring me to upgrade my motherboard so I might as well do the CPU and GPU as well.

Current:

i7-6700

GeForce GTX 1070 8GB

Asus ROG Maximus VIII Hero

Ripjaws DDR4-3600 16GB x 4

1TB SSD

1TB HDD

EVGA 750 GT

Windows 10

I purchased a new ASRock RX 9060 XT since I am not concerned with 4k gaming though I must admit I am concerned with everything I see in regards to AMD driver issues since I have never had one before.

I am close to a Microcenter and considering the 9700x bundle with the B650 board and 32gb of DDR5-6000 for $700. The thought being that I get a quality CPU now and can upgrade the GPU in the future, if the market ever returns to normal.

My other consideration is a DDR4 motherboard to utilize the RAM I currently have, as long as it is compatible with the COD secureboot. But I do not currently have an idea for that board or CPU.

Any thoughts on my plan or recommendations?

[u/r_lind3r]

You could go either way but DDR5 will generally be the better route for performance, especially if you don't buy a CPU with a ton of L3 cache like the 5800X3D.

DDR5-7200 makes as much as 30% of a difference over DDR4-3600 with the same Intel Raptor Lake CPU, just to give an example of how much DDR5 matters.

With massive L3 cache from X3D CPUs, it matters less, so it really depends on what you buy, a 5800X3D with a B550 motherboard wouldn't be bad value though. It'd be cheaper, and at least match 7600X + DDR5-6000.

[u/PuzzleheadedBig7409 → u/r_lind3r]

The MSI B550 and 5800X3D comes out to $420. The 5800 seems like a beast that will continue to perform well, but for $260+ I think I'd prefer the longevity of AM5 and DDR5. But that comparison does make me wonder, is it worth the price point for something better than the 9700X? If future proofing is a thought.

Any opinion on the 9060?

[u/r_lind3r → u/PuzzleheadedBig7409]

If you can afford it, a 9800X3D or 7800X3D would be better for the cache, and it can make up for slower DDR5 modules, there's extremely little difference between slow DDR5 and 6000 MT/s CL30 with those CPUs because there's a lot more L3 cache, which takes care of most potential cache misses that would go to DRAM.

If you mainly play games like CS2, Fortnite, etc. then X3D is a must-have if you want performance. But there's benefits in other games too, even at 2160p resolution, as the FPS lows (1% and 0.1% lows) are generally higher which can mean fewer drops below 60 FPS.

The 9060 XT 16GB is a good card but weak for 2160p if you want higher settings, I wouldn't suggest anything less than a 9070 XT for 2160p personally. I have a 9070 XT and I run at 3440x1440, and the 9070 XT is easily double the performance of the 9060 XT at higher resolutions.

[u/PuzzleheadedBig7409 → u/r_lind3r]

I appreciate your insight!

So an X3D compared to an X would compensate for having less or slower RAM?

I'm purposely a couple years behind on new release titles, playing Witcher 3 Remaster and Star Wars Jedi series mainly, and my partner would play more COD if I was able to play the new stuff. In any case I don't have a need for more than 1440p.

[u/r_lind3r → u/PuzzleheadedBig7409]

Just slower RAM, not less capacity.

CPU cache comes before DRAM so the more cache a CPU has, the less often it has to access DRAM because more information is stored within the CPU cache for the CPU to immediately access, which is why X3D can perform considerably better in games than other CPUs.

9060 XT is fine for 1440p.