I currently have an Intel i7-7700, 24GB of 2400MHz RAM, and a GTX 1050 Ti. I'm planning to move to an AM5 motherboard with a Ryzen 5 9600X in a few months, but I'm considering buying the GPU first—a Radeon RX 9070 XT. I know the 9070 XT would be heavily limited by my current CPU, but my 1050 Ti struggles badly. Games freeze, and I often have to play at 720p with competitive settings just to get a usable experience. I mostly enjoy story-driven games such as Stellar Blade, Cyberpunk 2077, and NieR:Automata. I've already purchased an MSI 850W 80+ Gold power supply. Would buying the GPU now and upgrading the rest of the platform later be a sensible plan? Also, my unusual 24GB RAM setup came from upgrading a donated PC that originally had an i5-7500, 8GB of RAM, and the 1050 Ti.
2 Answers
The 1050 Ti is the main reason modern games are so difficult to run, so upgrading the GPU first makes sense if you want an immediate improvement. The 850W power supply is more than sufficient for the planned card and future system. Just expect some temporary CPU limitations until you complete the AM5 upgrade, particularly in CPU-heavy games and at 1080p.
Buying the 9070 XT first is a reasonable upgrade path. Your i7-7700 will bottleneck it in plenty of games, especially at lower resolutions, but the card should still be a massive improvement over the 1050 Ti. Once you move to the 9600X and a newer platform, you’ll be able to use the GPU much more effectively. You could also move to 1440p, where the graphics card will have more room to stretch its legs.
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