I recently upgraded from a Ryzen 5 5600X to a Ryzen 7 9800X3D. My current system has the 9800X3D, an RX 9060 XT 16GB, and 16GB of RAM, and I'm currently gaming at 1080p. When I've saved enough for my next upgrade, should I buy a faster graphics card such as an RX 9070 XT, or move up to a 1440p display first?
3 Answers
Go for the 1440p monitor first. The RX 9060 XT should handle 1440p well, especially with sensible settings and upscaling. A stronger GPU would make more sense later, when a newer generation arrives or your current card starts falling short.
I’d prioritize a good 1440p OLED monitor. Your current graphics card is capable enough for that resolution, and the jump from 1080p to 1440p will be much more noticeable than replacing a GPU that already performs well. The exact games you play still matter, of course.
Before either of those upgrades, consider moving to 32GB of system memory. After that, I’d choose the 1440p monitor and only upgrade to a 9070 XT if you later need more performance. At 1440p, the workload shifts more toward the GPU, so your 9800X3D is already more than enough.
A 5600X would probably have been adequate for this graphics card at 1440p in many games, so the CPU upgrade wasn’t necessary for this particular setup—but the 9800X3D gives you plenty of headroom now.
That was my experience too. After getting used to a higher-resolution display, going back to 1080p is surprisingly hard.