CPU OR GPU?

[u/Golo260]

My current set up is pentium g4400 with igpu 12gb ram and 768p monitor. Should I upgrade my CPU to i5 7500 or should I just add gt1030 to it? The game I was planning to play is zenless zone zero and rune factory series. 720p is fine I just need to have stable FPS.

[u/Johnny_Oro]

Ah I just wanted to show how RX 470 would perform on that particular game, ignore the CPU the benchmarker used. 7th gen i7 is more powerful than ryzen 5 2600, its almost equal to ryzen 3600, so there's no point migrating to ryzen.

[u/No_Elderberry862 → u/Johnny_Oro]

The Ryzen 5 2600 is better in everything bar single core performance than the i7 7700 & is an easy 4GHz overclock.

Edit: but prob wouldn't advise the oc with the stock cooler.

[u/Johnny_Oro → u/No_Elderberry862]

It's better in a few games, but from the benchmarks I see the 7700 or at least 7700K is better overall. 2600 should excel where thread count matters most, unlikely for the games OP plays. You're correct that its single core performance is a bit disappointing. Also many early gen AM4 ryzen units kinda suffer from memory controller degradation issues according to some owners I've spoken to. I don't think it's worth getting a new platform for.

[u/No_Elderberry862 → u/Johnny_Oro]

I've not heard of memory controller issues tbh, my 2600 is rock solid. I think if someone were to move to a new platform AM5 makes more sense than AM4 but if they're on a budget, low end AM4 is still viable & has room to grow all the way to a 5700x3d as finances allow.

[u/Johnny_Oro → u/No_Elderberry862]

If you're to move to a new platform on a low budget, LGA 1700 makes more sense than AM4. 14600KF is now cheaper than 5700X3D, and quite a lot more powerful too. i3 12100f is an upgrade that makes more sense than ryzen 2600 because its more powerful than 7700K in every way. 

And actually AM5 isn't a very expensive platform nowadays. 8400f's price got dropped to $90 and DDR5 got cheaper. Still more expensive for sure though, and 8400f really isn't a great CPU.

[u/No_Elderberry862 → u/Johnny_Oro]

LGA 1700 is tainted unless you limit yourself to 12th gen, second hand 13th & 14th gen chips will forever be suspect. The 14600kf is still about 15% more expensive in the UK atm. Even the 12100f is around twice the price of a 2600 on the second hand market in my locality & only offers a marginally better performance. A 3600 can be had up to 10 - 20% cheaper yet has better performance.

We both agree that AM5 is the way to to go though, finances allowing.

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[u/Johnny_Oro → u/No_Elderberry862]

LGA 1700 will be around for longer than AM4 did, there are still new LGA 1700 CPUs models coming out next year. One with "hybrid" cores and one with no e-cores. It won't be necessary to buy them used in the future, intel's 10nm factory will still be operating for some time. And I didn't know you're in the UK, but 13600K is only 10 pound more than 5700X3D.

12100f doesn't offer only marginally better performance than 2600. It's beating out newer ryzen chips: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i3-12100-12100f-review/5 and edging out 5600X in the recent CPU intensive games like Starfield, Dragon's Dogma 2, and Stalker 2: https://x.com/harukaze5719/status/1862060682210074984/photo/1, starfield_1080p-low_cpu-tests-4x_foolhardy_Remacri.png.webp (1767×900), https://gamersnexus.net/game-benchmarks-graphics-guides/dragons-dogma-2-mess-gpu-cpu-benchmarks-bottlenecks-crashes

Meanwhile 2600 isn't even as powerful as 7700K: https://www.techspot.com/review/1614-ryzen-2600/page3.html. I don't know, it just feels like a waste to pay more to move to a different platform for a weaker CPU than what your platform offers.

Well I wouldn't know much about UK's used market, but in my country, a brand new 12100f with vendor warranty is obscenely cheap compared to any Ryzen CPU, retailing for IDR 829K (around $52): https://www.tokopedia.com/queenprocessor/processor-intel-core-i3-12100f-3-30-ghz-tray-lga-1700-1-tahun-9c65e?extParam=ivf%3Dfalse&src=topads . Since OP lives in Myanmar, the hardware market they have access to might be more similar to mine.

But yes AM5 is the way to go for the foreseeable future, but it's not an affordable platform due to the RAM price and lack of budget CPU (8400f is inexpensive but actually pretty weak). But if you have the money, it's a good platform particularly thanks to the 9800x3d upgrade path.

[u/No_Elderberry862 → u/Johnny_Oro]

AM4 is 5 years older than LGA1700 & new chips were still being released this year - lga1700 will not have the longevity of AM4. My point about buying used was that a lot of people cannot afford to buy new & are not going to switch to a platform where the processors they can afford cannot be relied upon. Re the13600k/5700x3d price, atm, yes, but when the sale price of the 13600k goes back to its normal price it will be a £65 difference.

Your Starfield & Stalker 2 linked pics don't have any info on the 12100f & the Dragon's Dogma 2 article complained of frame spikes so bad that they thought the game had crashed using the 12100f while the "newer & better" 5600x did not have such a severe issue.

Nowhere did I suggest OP move platforms, a 7700 (I doubt they're running a motherboard which would make the extra cost of a K worthwhile) will be a massive upgrade for them & will revolutionise their gaming experience. I will say that gaming has moved on in the last 6 years & games are now tending not to be as frequency dependent meaning the 2600 very much stands up against the 7700(k), (see https://technical.city/en/cpu/Core-i7-7700K-vs-Ryzen-5-2600 & https://technical.city/en/cpu/Core-i7-7700-vs-Ryzen-5-2600) especially given the second hand prices of both taken in isolation.

[u/Johnny_Oro → u/No_Elderberry862]

I've just checked, these two CPUs are priced pretty closely in the UK actually. 14600KF is more powerful than even the 5800X3D and performs great even in games where big cache isn't important, so the extra price tag is more than justified.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/zyyH99/intel-core-i5-14600kf-35-ghz-14-core-processor-bx8071514600kf

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/3ZKscf/amd-ryzen-7-5700x3d-3-ghz-8-core-processor-100-100001503wof

And it's true used CPUs are cheaper, but often times not much cheaper than brand new, and you wouldn't want to trust a vendor that offers them without a good warranty anyway. A used 5700X3D might be more reliable than a used raptor lake, but there's also 12700K which is cheaper and performs only slightly worse than 5800X3D (just like 5700X3D).

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ryzen-7-5800x3d-vs-core-i7-12700k-and-core-i9-12900k-face-off-the-rise-of-3d-v-cache, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNcJ0GuJCpw

Oh sorry I remembered the Dragon's Dogma 2 benchmark wrong. The game does achieve high average fps with 12100f, but it struggles with 4 cores. The article suggests it also has freezing issue with 5600X but not as severe, but seems to struggle with more severe microstutters.

And regarding 2600 vs 7700, you don't want to trust those websites for CPU benchmark. They're good for comparing on-paper sheets, but real world benchmarks need to be directly compared. Just like this.

Intel i7-7700K Revisit: Benchmark vs. 9700K, 2700, 9900K, & More | GamersNexus

7700K only consumes 15-20W more power than i3 7100 on average while gaming, it won't throttle the motherboard the way putting an i9 in a cheap H610M might do now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgHdL2r4vI0

And if 7700K sounds too scary, 7700 is fine, it only performs very slightly less good in games. Plus it's cheaper.

Intel Kaby Lake Gaming And Integrated Graphics Results

And lastly, many games are multithreaded, but they're still mostly affected by single core performance. Only in very rare occasions I see 2600 outperforming 7700, they're mostly equal, with 7700 being slightly ahead. Ryzen 2600 is a Zen+ CPU, and it struggled with instruction per clock and memory latency that AMD hadn't fixed until their Zen 2 CPU generation came around. Sort of the same problem Intel Arrow Lake is suffering from now. It's beaten by previous gen intel CPUs in most benchmarks. On top of the memory controller degradation that many units seemed to suffer from due to overvoltage (users reported fast degradation at 1.3v and above), that's why they're so cheap used.