I'd like to improve my gaming PC because Rust is becoming difficult to run smoothly. I mainly play Rust at 1920×1080 and want to stay on my current AM4 platform rather than replacing the motherboard and switching to AM5. My upgrade budget is around $800. Temperatures usually stay below 80°C. Current components: Lexar NM710 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, 16GB Kingston FURY Beast DDR4-3200 memory (2×8GB), MSI B550-A PRO motherboard, AMD Ryzen 5 5600 processor, MSI MAG A650BN 650W power supply, and XFX Radeon RX 6700 XT 12GB graphics card. What would be the best upgrade path, and which component is most likely limiting my performance?
3 Answers
Your RX 6700 XT is still a capable 1080p card with plenty of VRAM, so I wouldn’t replace it immediately unless monitoring shows that the GPU is consistently maxed out. Increasing memory from 16GB to 32GB could also help Rust and general multitasking by reducing stutter when other programs or browser tabs are open. Add a matching 2×16GB DDR4-3200 or DDR4-3600 kit rather than mixing random modules. With an $800 budget, a 5700X3D and 32GB of RAM would likely make more sense than spending the whole amount on a new graphics card.
For Rust specifically, the CPU is a strong candidate for the first upgrade. It is an open-world game that can benefit from better CPU performance and cache, especially for smoother frame times. Since you want to keep AM4, a Ryzen 7 5700X3D would be an excellent upgrade from the Ryzen 5 5600. A 5800X3D is also good if priced reasonably, but the 5700X3D is usually the better value. Check your motherboard BIOS support before installing it.
Before buying anything, check your CPU and GPU usage while playing Rust with an overlay such as MSI Afterburner. Also note your average and 1% low FPS, temperatures, resolution, and graphics settings. If the GPU is near 95–100% usage, a graphics card upgrade would help; if one or more CPU cores are maxed while GPU usage is lower, the processor is the limitation. Your temperatures sound fine, so heat is probably not the issue.
I mainly play Rust at 1920×1080, and I’d prefer to stay at that resolution for now. My temperatures don’t usually go above 80°C.
Thanks! I’d like to keep the existing AM4 motherboard, so an X3D processor sounds like the kind of upgrade I’m looking for.