I'm getting back into PC gaming after mainly using a PS5 Pro and want to upgrade my current 2020-era system for modern and upcoming games at 4K/60 FPS on high settings, with or without upscaling. My current hardware is a Radeon RX 5700 XT, Ryzen 5 3600, MSI B450 Tomahawk Max, 16GB DDR4-3200, a 500GB Samsung 970 Evo plus a 2TB SSD, a 650W be quiet! Straight Power 11 Gold power supply, and a Dark Rock 4 cooler.
My main upgrade idea is a Radeon RX 9070 XT for roughly €770. I'm unsure whether the Ryzen 5 3600, PCIe 3.0 platform, and 16GB of RAM would hold the GPU back, so I'm considering moving to AM5 with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, an MSI B850 Tomahawk WiFi motherboard, and 32GB of DDR5-6000. That complete upgrade would cost around €1,800, excluding possible new fans.
The cheaper alternative would be to keep my current motherboard and DDR4 memory, install a Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and possibly increase the RAM to 32GB. That option would cost about €1,320 with the new GPU. I'm not sure whether buying a 2022 CPU and staying on DDR4 is sensible, or whether the expensive DDR5 memory makes the AM5 upgrade poor value right now.
I play shooters, RPGs, RTS games, Factorio, and would like to try city builders such as Anno and Cities: Skylines. I don't know how CPU-intensive most of these games will be, so I'm tempted to buy a stronger CPU for extra headroom and upgrade the graphics card more regularly later. Which approach makes the most sense: keep the existing AM4/DDR4 platform with a 5800X3D, or move to AM5 now with a newer X3D processor?
2 Answers
The 5800X3D is roughly in the same general gaming-performance range as a Ryzen 5 7600X, though it can approach faster CPUs in games that benefit especially from its extra cache. That’s plenty for a 9070 XT in most 4K gaming scenarios.
An AM5 build with a 7800X3D would be a reasonable middle ground if you want a newer platform without paying for the 9800X3D. The 9800X3D is the fastest option here and should remain useful for longer, but it is arguably more CPU than a GPU in the 9070 XT class needs. The extra performance becomes more valuable if you later install a substantially faster graphics card or play at lower resolutions and high refresh rates.
The best way to decide is to check benchmarks for the games you actually play and compare the 5800X3D with the 9800X3D. That will show how much performance you would really gain rather than assuming the newer platform is automatically worth the cost.
For a 4K/60 target, the graphics card will usually be the limiting component, so the 5800X3D should be capable of pairing well with a 9070 XT. It’s still an older platform, but it remains a strong gaming CPU and moving from a Ryzen 5 3600 to it would be a major improvement. Upgrading to 32GB of DDR4 would also be sensible for newer games and large simulation or building titles.
That makes sense, although I’m not very familiar with judging CPU requirements since I mostly played on consoles before. I don’t play many traditional simulations, but I do play Factorio and want to try games like Anno and Cities: Skylines. Since I can’t predict how demanding my future games will be, I was leaning toward buying more CPU headroom now.
I checked the local prices and the 7800X3D is only about €80 cheaper than the 9800X3D. With that small a difference, I’m inclined to choose the 9800X3D for the additional headroom and keep the motherboard and CPU for several years while upgrading the GPU more often.