I'm planning an upgrade from my current Ryzen 5 5600G, GTX 1660 Ti, X470 motherboard, 16GB of 2400MHz RAM, and Corsair 550W power supply. My main issue is frame rates dropping below 70 FPS, which is starting to make me feel motion sick. I'm considering a Radeon 9060 XT or GeForce RTX 5060 8GB because they're among the better-value options where I live. Since my motherboard only supports PCIe 3.0, I'm also worried that the CPU, RAM, motherboard, and power supply could hold back a newer graphics card. Would it make more sense to upgrade individual parts, or sell the entire system and buy a newer Ryzen 7 5700G build?
3 Answers
Don’t choose the 5600G just because your board is limited to PCIe 3.0. A regular Ryzen 5 5600 works on PCIe 3.0 motherboards and is faster overall because it has more cache. At 1080p, many games may be CPU-limited, especially if you aren’t playing demanding AAA titles, so a CPU upgrade could help more than a graphics card. At 1440p, a GPU upgrade makes more sense, although your current platform may not need an especially powerful card. I’d look at a 5600, 5700X, or 5500X3D rather than buying another APU.
If your budget allows it, a Ryzen 5 5500X3D paired with the 9060 XT 16GB would be a strong upgrade. PCIe 3.0 will cost you a little performance, but the difference usually isn’t large enough to justify replacing the motherboard by itself.
I hadn’t heard of the 5500X3D before, but the large cache looks impressive. I may consider it after upgrading the graphics card. The Ryzen 7 5700X is about $100 cheaper here, though.
PCIe 3.0 is compatible with the Ryzen 5 5600, and the performance difference from PCIe 4.0 is generally modest. If the 9060 XT 16GB is reasonably priced, I’d choose it over the RTX 5060 8GB because the extra VRAM should age better. Just make sure your 550W power supply is a good-quality model and has the required connectors.
The 9060 XT costs about $100 more here, while older cards are priced almost the same and used listings are surprisingly expensive. The 5600G’s integrated graphics still seemed useful in case I had to wait before buying a replacement GPU.
I chose the 5600G because I found a good used deal and wanted integrated graphics as a backup while saving for a new GPU. A regular 5600 costs almost as much as new in my area.