I upgraded from a GTX 1660 Super to an RX 6700 XT, mainly to improve performance in Monster Hunter Wilds. The graphics card has been a big improvement, but now my Ryzen 5 3600 seems to be the limiting factor in several games. Helldivers 2 and 007 First Light stutter while the GPU sits around 70–90% usage and the CPU stays heavily loaded across all cores. Helldivers 2 also pushes CPU temperatures into the 80–90°C range. Monster Hunter Wilds still has some issues, although Warframe and Deadlock run smoothly above 100 FPS, so the problem seems to depend heavily on the game. My system has a Ryzen 5 3600, RX 6700 XT, 16GB of RAM, a Biostar B450MH motherboard, and games installed on an SSD. Since AM4 lets me upgrade without replacing the board or memory, I'm considering a Ryzen 7 5700X3D or 5800X3D. Is the 5700X3D enough for this graphics card, or is the 5800X3D worth paying extra for? Are there any BIOS, memory, cooling, or compatibility issues I should check first?
4 Answers
I wouldn’t choose a Ryzen 5 5500 as the main upgrade here. It is only a modest step up from the 3600 and can be a poor value when stronger AM4 options are available. A 5700X3D would give you much more headroom for CPU-heavy games without requiring a new motherboard or RAM.
A Zen 3 upgrade should make a noticeable difference. Even a Ryzen 5 5600, 5600X, or Ryzen 7 5700X would be significantly better than the 3600 in CPU-heavy games, and either X3D chip would be a particularly strong drop-in upgrade for smoother frame times. The 5700X3D is usually the better value; the 5800X3D is only worth the extra money if the price gap is small or you want the fastest possible AM4 option.
Before ordering, check the motherboard CPU support list and update the BIOS while the Ryzen 5 3600 is still installed. Also verify that your board’s BIOS version supports the specific X3D processor. Make sure the cooler is mounted properly and has fresh thermal paste, since 80–90°C under a heavy workload is worth investigating regardless of the upgrade.
Helldivers 2 is also known for being unusually CPU-heavy and poorly optimized in some situations. Updates can change performance, and it may fail to keep the GPU fully utilized even on otherwise balanced systems. That said, the consistently high CPU load across several demanding games still makes a platform upgrade reasonable.
That matches what I’ve seen. The game ran better on my old 1660 Super at launch, but later updates seem to put much more strain on the CPU.
The newer games are putting much more pressure on the CPU than games did a few years ago, so the 6700 XT can still be perfectly capable while the older processor holds back GPU utilization.