My RTX 3070 died, so I replaced it with a Radeon 9070. I still have a Ryzen 5 5600X and 32GB of DDR4, and I have some budget left—but not enough to replace both the CPU and memory. I game at 1440p and would like to know whether moving to a Ryzen 7 5800X would provide a noticeable improvement, or whether I should keep the 5600X, upgrade to an X3D chip, or put the money toward a future platform change.
3 Answers
For gaming, the regular Ryzen 7 5800X is usually not worth the upgrade. The 5600X and 5800X perform very similarly in most games, and the extra cores mainly help with heavily multithreaded productivity work. At 1440p, your new GPU will generally be the limiting factor anyway, so I’d install the 9070 first and see how the system performs.
Don’t replace 32GB of DDR4 with 16GB of DDR5 just to make a partial upgrade. DDR5 would require a new motherboard and likely a newer CPU as well, while 16GB can already be restrictive in some modern games. Your current memory capacity is fine; either keep the system as-is, buy an X3D chip if the price is reasonable, or save for a complete platform upgrade later.
If you want to maximize the AM4 platform specifically for gaming, look for an X3D processor such as the 5700X3D or 5800X3D. The extra cache can make a substantial difference in CPU-limited games, unlike the standard 5800X. Otherwise, keeping the 5600X and saving for a new platform is probably the better use of your money.
The X3D upgrade is most noticeable in games that are CPU-limited, such as competitive titles. In graphically demanding 1440p games, the improvement may be smaller, but it still makes more sense than moving from a 5600X to a regular 5800X.