I currently have a Ryzen 5 5500 and am considering an upgrade. The Ryzen 7 5700X is one option, but the Ryzen 7 5700X3D costs around $300 where I live. I mainly want smoother performance in games: Fortnite can drop into the 90 FPS range during Zone Wars, while Apex Legends usually runs around 160–180 FPS but falls to 110–120 FPS in CPU-heavy areas. I'm on a budget, so is either upgrade worthwhile, or should I keep my current CPU and wait?
4 Answers
The 5700X3D is the one I’d choose for your situation, but $300 is getting expensive for an AM4 chip. Compare that price with a newer platform before buying. If you can get the processor on sale, it should provide a much better improvement to 1% lows than the regular 5700X.
AM4 doesn’t have much of an upgrade path left, so it can make sense to keep the 5500 and save for a future DDR5 platform instead. That said, if you want better gaming performance now and can find the 5700X3D at a reasonable price, it’s probably the last worthwhile gaming upgrade for your current motherboard.
Before buying anything, check your GPU, monitor refresh rate, resolution, and current CPU/GPU usage while playing. At 1080p with a high-refresh-rate monitor, a CPU upgrade can help, especially in competitive games. If your GPU is already the limiting factor, though, changing the processor may not make much difference.
If gaming is the main reason for upgrading, the 5700X3D is the better choice. Its extra 3D V-Cache can noticeably improve minimum FPS and reduce stutters in CPU-heavy games compared with the regular 5700X. The 5700X is faster than your 5500 in some situations, but it usually isn’t the best value for a gaming upgrade.
I’m mainly trying to stop the big FPS drops rather than completely rebuild the PC, so I’m leaning toward the 5700X3D if the price is reasonable.