I was planning to buy an RTX 5060, but its price increased from about $410 to $510, which no longer seems like a great value. I found a used RTX 3070 8GB for around $350, and it appears to offer similar raw gaming performance, although it lacks some of the newer features available on current-generation cards.
My system has a Ryzen 5 5600 and a 120Hz 1080p monitor, so I will mainly be gaming at 1080p. Will the Ryzen 5 5600 significantly limit an RTX 3070 at that resolution, or would this be a well-balanced combination for gaming?
4 Answers
That combination should work well. The Ryzen 5 5600 is still capable enough for an RTX 3070, and you should get strong 1080p performance without a major CPU bottleneck in most games.
The RTX 3070 should perform about as well as the RTX 5060 in traditional rasterized games, but remember that it only has 8GB of VRAM and is an older used card. Check its condition, temperatures, and warranty before buying. If a newer 16GB card such as an RX 9060 XT is only $100–$150 more in your area, that may offer better long-term value, but at $350 the 3070 is still a reasonable choice.
I used a Ryzen 5 5600 with a similar graphics card and found it to be a very good match. Unless you are specifically chasing extremely high frame rates, upgrading the CPU is unlikely to make a meaningful difference right now.
Some bottleneck will always exist depending on the game, settings, and frame rate target. At 1080p, CPU limits are more likely in esports games or titles aiming for very high refresh rates, but this pairing should not generally result in a severe performance loss.
That is helpful. I mainly want stable performance around my monitor's 120Hz refresh rate, not maximum possible frame rates in every competitive game.