I used a Ryzen 5 5600X with an RTX 2060 Super for several years, but recently upgraded to a Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB. I mainly play Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p and usually average around 120–140 FPS, but performance drops to roughly 60–70 FPS in dense city areas. I'm considering moving to a Ryzen 7 9800X3D because the poor 1% lows may be caused by the CPU. I've already purchased a B850M motherboard and DDR5 memory. Since I'm staying with a 1080p monitor for games like Apex Legends, would the 9800X3D provide a noticeable improvement in average FPS and especially frame-time consistency?
5 Answers
If you still had your old motherboard and memory, a Ryzen 7 5800X3D would be a much cheaper drop-in upgrade and could greatly improve the lows. However, because you already bought an AM5 motherboard and DDR5, returning those parts just to stay on AM4 probably isn’t worthwhile.
You’ll get good gains, especially at 1080p, but putting the money toward a faster GPU such as an RX 9070 XT could produce a larger overall visual upgrade. A less expensive CPU paired with the stronger graphics card would also make a lot of sense if you eventually move to 1440p.
Before buying the CPU, check your GPU and CPU usage during the city-area drops. If the GPU is below full utilization while one or more CPU cores are heavily loaded, then the processor is limiting performance. Also try adjusting crowd density, ray tracing, and upscaling settings, since those can affect both frame rates and frame-time consistency.
You should see a substantial improvement in CPU-heavy games, particularly in the 1% lows. Cyberpunk’s crowded areas can stress the CPU with NPC and traffic simulation, and 1080p puts more of the workload on the processor. The 9800X3D is probably more CPU than the RX 9060 XT needs, but it should make the system feel much smoother.
The upgrade will be noticeable, but the 9800X3D may be overkill for this graphics card. A 7800X3D or another less expensive AM5 processor would likely deliver similar gaming performance with an RX 9060 XT, leaving more money for a future GPU upgrade.
Since the B850M board and DDR5 RAM are already purchased, sticking with the newer platform makes more sense than going back to an older AM4 chip. The question is mainly whether the extra cost of the 9800X3D is worth it.
At 1080p, I agree that the GPU should have plenty of headroom, so the stronger CPU could make a real difference in Apex and the dense city sections of Cyberpunk.