My current system has an RTX 3060 12GB, 16GB of DDR4-3200, a Ryzen 5 3600X, an MSI B450 Gaming Plus MAX motherboard, a Corsair TX650M power supply, and an M.2 SSD. AM5 and DDR5 upgrades are too expensive for me right now, so I want an AM4 processor that can keep the system usable for another four or five years. I mainly play single-player games at 1440p with medium settings. Average FPS is not my biggest concern, but I am experiencing stutters and slow texture or model loading even when the games are installed on the M.2 drive. I am considering a Ryzen 5 5500X3D for about €170 or a Ryzen 7 5800X3D for roughly €340, possibly with another 16GB of RAM. Is the 5800X3D worth paying twice as much for long-term use, or would a GPU upgrade to something like an RTX 5060 be more useful? I can only upgrade the CPU and RAM or the GPU this year, not both.
3 Answers
A GPU upgrade will help when the RTX 3060 is the limiting factor, but it will not solve CPU-related stutters, simulation slowdowns, or poor frame-time consistency. Since you are already playing at 1440p with moderate settings and are more bothered by drops than average FPS, upgrading the CPU first makes more sense. You can replace the GPU later when the 3060 becomes the clear bottleneck.
A cheaper Ryzen 5 5600 or Ryzen 7 5700X is also compatible with the motherboard, but the gaming improvement over the 3600X may be modest. The 5700X, for example, does not automatically improve every game, particularly if the game is GPU-limited. For your specific goal of reducing severe drops, an X3D model is the more targeted upgrade. Also consider moving to 32GB of RAM if your games are using nearly all 16GB; adding memory can help with hitching caused by paging, although it will not fix every streaming problem. Two matching sticks are generally preferable to filling all four slots.
I was considering adding another 16GB because some newer games seem to be pushing beyond 16GB. I will check memory usage before buying, rather than assuming the extra sticks will solve everything.
The 5500X3D is probably the better value if it is available at around €170. The 5800X3D can be faster in CPU-limited games, but it usually is not twice as fast, so the extra €170 is difficult to justify unless you specifically need the highest AM4 gaming performance. Either X3D chip should improve frame-time consistency more than a normal 5600 or 5700X, especially in CPU-heavy games. Your B450 board should support these processors after a BIOS update.
I am mainly interested in the extra cache because of the stutters and frame drops, not just higher average FPS. I would like the upgrade to last several years.
That was my concern too: if I upgrade the GPU first, I might still have the same stutters and texture-loading problems because the 3600X would remain in the system.