I'm currently using a Ryzen 5 3600, and it has started to become a limiting factor in some games. I'd like to upgrade without replacing my motherboard, so I'm considering the Ryzen 7 5700X since it uses the same AM4 socket. My budget is limited, but I'd still like to stay around the mid-to-high-end range. Is the 5700X worth buying for gaming, or would another AM4 processor offer better value?
3 Answers
For gaming alone, I’d look closely at the Ryzen 5 5600 or 5600X. They usually perform within a few percent of the 5700X in games while costing less. The 5700X makes more sense if the price difference is small or you also do rendering, streaming, compiling, or other workloads that benefit from eight cores.
If you want the biggest gaming upgrade available on AM4, a 5700X3D or 5800X3D is the better target, assuming you can find one at a reasonable price. Otherwise, the 5700X is still worthwhile from a 3600. One upgrade example showed almost no change in Elden Ring, but much higher frame rates in Dota 2 and smoother performance during large World of Warcraft encounters. Check your GPU first, though—if it is already the limiting component, a CPU upgrade may not change much.
The 5700X is a solid drop-in upgrade from the 3600, especially if you play CPU-heavy games or multitask. It can improve minimum frame rates and reduce stuttering, but the difference will depend heavily on your graphics card and resolution. At 1080p, CPU improvements are generally easier to notice than at 1440p or 4K.
The extra cores can help with newer games and background applications, but they usually don’t create a major gaming performance increase over a 5600 or 5600X by themselves.