I'm not very experienced with PC upgrades and would appreciate some advice. My current system has an Intel Core i5-12600KF, RTX 2070 8GB, 16GB DDR4-2400 memory using two sticks, an ASUS TUF Gaming B760-PLUS WiFi D4 motherboard, Corsair RM850 850W power supply, a 1TB SSD, Windows 11, and a 1080p 144Hz monitor. Everything is installed in an MSI MAG Forge 100R case. I have roughly £650 to spend and would mainly like to play Star Wars Outlaws and future games such as Forza Horizon 6 at 1080p, medium settings, and at least 60 FPS. Star Wars Outlaws currently drops to around 20 FPS in open-world areas. I'm considering upgrading the graphics card and RAM, but I'm unsure whether the rest of the system is suitable or where to begin troubleshooting.
2 Answers
Before buying anything, check whether the poor performance is caused by a system issue rather than simply old hardware. Monitor CPU and GPU temperatures, GPU usage, CPU usage, RAM usage, and clock speeds while playing. Also make sure the game is using the dedicated GPU, drivers are current, and there are no background programs consuming resources. The RTX 2070 should be capable of around 60 FPS at 1080p medium in this game under the right conditions, so roughly 20 FPS may indicate thermal throttling, a driver problem, incorrect settings, or another bottleneck.
A sensible upgrade within that budget would be 32GB of DDR4-3200 CL16 memory alongside a Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB. That should be a substantial improvement over the RTX 2070 and ought to be suitable for 1080p medium settings, with enough graphics memory for newer games. Your 850W power supply and processor should be more than adequate. Moving from NVIDIA to AMD is normally straightforward: remove the old graphics driver, install the AMD driver, and then configure the game settings.
Thanks! I’ll look into that. I wasn’t sure whether changing from NVIDIA to AMD would cause problems, but a driver change sounds manageable.
That makes sense. I’ll start by checking temperatures, usage, and whether the game is actually using the RTX 2070 before ordering parts.