I'm planning a major PC purchase in November and would like advice before spending roughly €3,000–€3,500. My current system is a Ryzen 7 5700X3D, RX 7700 XT 12GB, 16GB DDR4-3600, ASUS ROG Strix B550-A motherboard, Corsair RM750x PSU, DeepCool LS720 SE cooler, and DeepCool CH560 Digital case. I use two 1440p 240Hz monitors and have owned the system for about two and a half years.
My main gaming target is Forza Horizon 6 at 1440p on very high or Extreme settings, preferably with ray tracing and high native-rendered FPS rather than depending heavily on upscaling or frame generation. I also play other games, but Forza will probably be the most demanding title I care about.
I also do substantial video work in Premiere Pro, After Effects, CapCut, DaVinci Resolve, and OBS. My projects include 4K footage, car-game cinematics, masks, overlays, motion blur, and other demanding effects. I'm starting to edit for other people, so I want enough performance and memory headroom for the next several years.
The potential new build would use a Ryzen 9 9950X3D, RTX 5080, 64GB DDR5-6000 CL30, an ROG B850-A WiFi motherboard, a suitable cooler, and an 850W-or-larger power supply. I'm in Romania and have found some unusually good local deals, including discounted new CPUs and memory. One RTX 5080 I found costs about €1,700.
Should I buy especially good component deals now and build later, wait until November and purchase everything together, or avoid replacing the whole system for now? Is €1,700 reasonable for an RTX 5080, and would it be a sensible match for a 9950X3D and 64GB of DDR5 for this combination of gaming and editing?
3 Answers
I would not completely dismiss upscaling based only on older FSR results. Image quality has improved, and current DLSS or newer FSR modes can look very close to native rendering in many situations. That is especially worth testing at 1440p, where a high-quality quality-mode setting may give you more performance without the obvious artifacts you dislike.
That said, your concern is reasonable for recorded cinematics, where shimmering or frame-generation artifacts can be much more noticeable. For those projects, native rendering or carefully chosen upscaling may still be preferable. Try the latest options on your existing system before deciding that you need to spend €1,700 on a GPU solely to avoid them.
Your current PC is still quite capable, especially because the 5700X3D remains a strong gaming CPU. I would first increase the memory to 32GB or 64GB, since 16GB can be restrictive for 4K editing and effects work. For gaming, you could keep the platform and upgrade the graphics card later rather than replacing everything immediately. A newer Radeon card such as a 9070, 9070 GRE, or 9070 XT could provide a substantial 1440p improvement without forcing you to replace the rest of the system.
The main reasons to move to DDR5 now would be your editing workload, the need for more CPU cores, or a particularly exceptional bundle deal. Otherwise, waiting for a later platform generation may give you a more meaningful upgrade.
Be careful about buying the RTX 5080 too early just because it is available. €1,700 is a lot for a 1440p card, even with ray tracing and high refresh-rate goals. It can make sense if you need Nvidia’s software and encoding features for your editing workflow and the price is genuinely competitive in your local market, but compare it against current and upcoming alternatives rather than judging it in isolation.
For your use case, a 9950X3D with 64GB of DDR5 is not an absurd combination. The CPU is useful for heavy multitasking, exports, effects, and gaming, while 64GB is a sensible starting point for large 4K projects. However, you do not need to buy every part at once. Memory, storage, and cooling deals are generally safer to buy ahead of time than a high-end GPU, whose price and newer alternatives can change more quickly.
That’s fair. I have very high standards when I’m recording detailed game footage, so even small artifacts make me wary of frame generation and upscaling. I’ll test the newer modes more carefully rather than relying on my experience with older FSR versions.