I'm building a budget gaming PC aimed at playing newer and upcoming games at reasonable frame rates. I'd be happy with around 30–40 FPS in a demanding game like GTA 6. I already bought a Ryzen 7 5700 and an RTX 3060 Ti, but I've since seen criticism that the non-X Ryzen 7 5700 performs worse than expected and is closer to lower-end Ryzen chips in some games. Will this combination deliver the kind of performance the RTX 3060 Ti is capable of in games such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Red Dead Redemption 2? Is the Ryzen 7 5700 still a decent gaming CPU, and should I expect at least playable performance in future titles?
4 Answers
The Ryzen 7 5700 is usable, but it has only 16MB of L3 cache, unlike the 5700X and 5600X, which have 32MB. That can hurt minimum frame rates and make it perform more like a Ryzen 5 5500 in some games. It doesn’t mean the processor is unusable, but the RTX 3060 Ti may not always reach its full potential in CPU-heavy titles. Build the system, test actual games, and consider a later CPU upgrade only if you see poor 1% lows or noticeable stuttering.
That combination should be capable of solid 1080p gaming. Cyberpunk 2077 and Red Dead Redemption 2 should be playable with sensible settings, and DLSS can help maintain performance in demanding scenes. You probably shouldn’t expect maxed-out settings with high frame rates, but the CPU is not a disaster and there’s no reason to replace it before trying the system.
The RTX 3060 Ti will generally be the limiting part, especially at higher settings or resolutions. Its 8GB of VRAM can cause problems in some newer games, so lowering texture quality and using upscaling may be necessary. At 1080p, though, this is still a capable pairing. GTA 6 is impossible to estimate accurately until PC requirements and benchmarks are available, so 30–40 FPS is plausible but not guaranteed.
The comparison to a current console is a reasonable rough guideline, but settings and optimization matter a lot. Some games may run around 60 FPS at 1080p with medium or high settings and upscaling, while poorly optimized or especially CPU-heavy games could drop lower. There is no reliable way to predict GTA 6 performance yet, so don’t treat any claimed frame rate as certain.
That’s what worried me—the cache difference seems to matter more for minimum FPS than average FPS. I’m mainly aiming to stay above 30 FPS, so I’ll test the system before deciding whether an upgrade is necessary.