I'm planning a roughly $1,000 upgrade because hardware prices don't seem likely to improve soon, and I'd like my system to handle modern games for several more years. My current build has a TUF X470-PLUS GAMING motherboard, Ryzen 5 5600X, Radeon RX 5600 XT, 600W 80+ Gold power supply, 32GB of Corsair Vengeance memory, and an iBUYPOWER i-Series case.
I'm considering either an RX 9070 XT with an upgrade to an 850W PSU, or a Ryzen 7 5800X3D paired with an RX 9060 XT. If the 5600X is good enough, I'd rather spend the money on the GPU alone, but I don't want the processor to hold back the upgrade.
My goal is 1440p gaming at high settings and ideally above 100 FPS. The games I'm most interested in are Cyberpunk 2077, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Oblivion Remastered. Which upgrade path makes the most sense?
4 Answers
You could consider a Ryzen 7 5700X3D or 5500X3D alongside an RX 9070 or 9070 XT. That would give you a stronger GPU while still improving CPU performance in games that benefit from extra cache. A non-XT 9070 could also be undervolted or power-limited if your current 600W supply is high quality, though replacing the PSU with a suitable 750–850W model is the safer choice for a 9070 XT.
Your Ryzen 5 5600X is still perfectly capable for most games and shouldn’t be treated as an automatic bottleneck. CPU limitations are more likely in simulation-heavy titles or when chasing very high frame rates. For your use case, upgrading the GPU first makes the most sense; you can replace the motherboard, CPU, and memory together in a later generation when the 5600X actually becomes the limiting part.
The 5800X3D and RX 9060 XT would be the more balanced pairing, but the GPU may not be strong enough for 1440p high settings at 100+ FPS in demanding games. A more realistic expectation is around 60–75 FPS with upscaling, depending on the game and whether ray tracing is enabled.
That target may be more ambitious than I realized unless I build around something like a 5090. Thanks for the perspective.
At 1440p, the graphics card will usually matter more than the processor, especially with high visual settings. I’d choose the RX 9070 or 9070 XT and plan on a PSU upgrade rather than pairing a significantly weaker GPU with an expensive end-of-platform CPU. Just keep expectations flexible: 100+ FPS in every listed game, particularly with ray tracing, will require compromises such as upscaling, frame generation, or lower settings.
I’m curious how much performance undervolting usually costs, since that could affect whether keeping the current PSU is worthwhile.