I'm planning to upgrade my gaming PC with a budget of around $1,000, but I'm not sure which parts are worth replacing first. My current system has a Radeon RX 6700 XT, Ryzen 5 5600, 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory, and an AMD A520 micro-ATX motherboard. I've noticed lag and occasional freezing while playing Spider-Man 2, usually at 1080p with medium-to-low settings. I'd like to improve performance without spending money on upgrades I don't actually need. What should I check or prioritize?
3 Answers
Before buying anything, figure out whether the CPU, GPU, temperatures, or memory is causing the problem. Cap the frame rate and use a monitoring tool such as RTSS to watch GPU usage, CPU usage, temperatures, clock speeds, and frame times while playing. Freezing can also come from thermal throttling, drivers, background programs, or a game-specific issue. Cleaning the PC and checking cooling may help more than an upgrade.
Your Ryzen 5 5600 and RX 6700 XT are still a reasonably balanced combination for 1080p, so replacing parts immediately may not be necessary. If the issue is CPU-limited performance, an AM4 X3D processor could be a worthwhile upgrade, but first confirm the motherboard BIOS supports it. Also check whether your A520 board, power supply, cooling, and case are suitable before committing to a major upgrade.
If monitoring shows that you really need more performance, a faster graphics card would provide the biggest improvement, especially if you want to move to 1440p or higher settings. A higher-end card such as an RX 9070 XT could fit the budget if you sell the RX 6700 XT, but make sure the power supply has enough capacity and the case has room. After that, consider a CPU upgrade and only increase to 32GB of RAM if memory usage is actually reaching the limit.
If I do end up upgrading the processor after the graphics card, which CPU would you recommend for this system?
I hadn’t considered capping the frame rate or monitoring the hardware. I’m currently playing at 1080p on mostly medium and low settings, although I’ll need to check the actual frame rate and temperatures when I’m back at my PC.