GPU prices in my area have risen sharply, with an RTX 5070 Ti costing around €1,300 and an RTX 5080 starting at roughly €1,400 or more. A platform upgrade would cost about €1,200–€1,300, including a decent B850 motherboard, 32GB of DDR5-6000 memory, a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and assembly. I already have a high-end Noctua NH-D15 G2 cooler that I could reuse.
The alternative is to keep my Ryzen 7 5700X3D and RTX 3060 Ti, save for a few months, and upgrade the GPU first. I play at 1440p and currently have no performance problems. Even in competitive games such as CS2, the CPU already delivers around 300–400 FPS, so I doubt a move to the 9800X3D would make a noticeable difference for my needs.
This upgrade is optional rather than necessary. I recently upgraded other components, including my PSU, case, and cooler, and my goal is eventually to have a high-end system that can run new games smoothly for several years. Would it make more sense to replace the GPU now and keep the 5700X3D, or move to AM5 first and upgrade the graphics card later?
4 Answers
Keep the 5700X3D for now and prioritize the graphics card. It is still a very capable gaming CPU, especially at 1440p, and moving to AM5 would mean paying for a motherboard and DDR5 just to gain a relatively small improvement in most games. A faster GPU should produce a much more noticeable difference in image quality and frame rates.
At 3840×1600, a 5800X3D paired with an RTX 5080 is still running without issues, so a 5700X3D should be more than adequate for your 1440p setup. Unless you need extra CPU performance, additional NVMe slots, or a feature such as integrated graphics, the GPU upgrade is the better first step.
The 9800X3D upgrade would mainly help in CPU-limited situations, such as very high-refresh competitive gaming or certain simulation and strategy games. Since you already get hundreds of FPS in CS2 and are happy with your current performance, it probably would not justify spending around €1,200 on a new platform. Waiting for a later generation could provide a more meaningful upgrade.
Make sure the platform upgrade estimate includes the cost of DDR5, since memory prices can also fluctuate. In your situation, I would keep saving and wait for GPU pricing to become more reasonable rather than replacing a perfectly good CPU. If you are committed to Nvidia, compare several models and consider selling the 3060 Ti to reduce the total cost.
That matches my thinking too. I can already run the games I play comfortably, so spending that much for a CPU and platform change seems hard to justify when the GPU would affect 1440p gaming more.