Upgrade advice, pls. Just video, just CPU, or more?

BlueMax wrote: ↑ Current rig is an i7-3770 (not K) and 4x4gb DDR3-1600 with RX-570 video. 75hz Freesync monitor set up properly.
It does pretty well, but stutters in certain games from time to time and I'm considering better performance to get that constant 75FPS.

1) Upgrade the base CPU platform to the new AMD 3300X + fast DDR4. Gaming comparisons put it ~40% higher than the 4770, but RX-570 may still be the bottleneck.
2) the 3770 is fine, upgrade just the video card and I'm good to go.
or 3) both.
If I need to upgrade both anyway, I might as well get myself a gaming laptop for just a little bit more money and gain the huge advantage of portability (since I can game during the downtime I have where I work!) Then the lappy will be the primary machine and the current desktop will be the backup for when my kids are over, etc.

Your thoughts?

You arent specific enough about, uhm, everything. What resolution is your monitor at, the game you're trying to play. 570 is too weak for 75 frps for sure. Until you upgrade it why dont you try overclocking the 570? Good for another 7-15% higher fps.

Thought the whole point of Freesync was so you don't get stutters... But, what is the Freesync range of your monitor--that's the important part. If it's something like 48-75Hz that means if you drop below 48 FPS, Freesync ain't gonna do anything for you.

What game(s) are you playing that are stuttering and what res/settings? RX 570 is quite good for what it costs but you're probably asking too much out of it...try reducing settings so you can at least maintain around 50 FPS+. You might do well to OC the 570 too. I didn't have much luck getting more core clock out of my 570 because the power limit on my Gigabyte card is a lame 90W (+50% only gets you to 135W and though there's ways to push it further, I'd rather not let the magic smoke out of it ). But you should be able to get the VRAM to 8Gbps no problem which may help you a little depending on the game. If you're already OC'd then not much else you can do on there...

You should be able to "OC" the CPU as well as long as your board supports MCE--that way you can get the single-core turbo speed on all cores, but again if you've done that already nowhere else to go. I would honestly try these things first because if you're just nipping at the heels of the performance you need, OCing may get you there and it's free.

If you do get into upgrading, as for what to upgrade first, it again depends on the game. Some will gain more with a faster CPU, but the reality is the largest jump will more likely come from a better GPU in most titles. The more modern the game, the more likely it can use more than four cores, so keep that in mind.

Because the 570 is such great value though I'll warn you that you're not really gonna see enough upgrade for the dollar, IMO, until you get to a 5600 XT or 5700. These are $400-450 cards though and prices are only going up (slowly) right now You could get something like a 1660 Super at around $350 which is a step up but my feeling on that is I'd just spend the extra on a 5600 XT or 5700 (which is actually what I did recently lol). Stuff like 1650 Super I wouldn't bother with as it's not much of an upgrade and they aren't exactly cheap either. GPU you got there now is pretty good bang for the buck until you get up to over $350.

+1 on GPU upgrade first. Since you're on a RX 570 i doubt it'll give you that much more performance even if you give it a better CPU. To be a significant upgrade it'll have to be 2060 Super / 5600XT or better really.... I used my GTX 1080 with my old i7 3770 for a while before upgrading my CPU, and performance wasn't too bad. I was able to to do Gears 5 at 1440p at 70-80 fps.

coilz wrote: ↑ +1 on GPU upgrade first. Since you're on a RX 570 i doubt it'll give you that much more performance even if you give it a better CPU. To be a significant upgrade it'll have to be 2060 Super / 5600XT or better really.... I used my GTX 1080 with my old i7 3770 for a while before upgrading my CPU, and performance wasn't too bad. I was able to to do Gears 5 at 1440p at 70-80 fps.

Well, this would be the *cheapest* upgrade path too. Even $400 for a mega video card is better than $500 for CPU/MOBO/RAM + old RX 570.
...best of all, my kid can have my old card and get a huge upgrade out of it too.
Really, I should add RivaTuner to my MSI Afterburner and check if it's the CPU or GPU that's maxed out ~100%.

I wasn't in a huge rush, but I see that prices are on the rise again so I should jump on any vard deals I find. Thanks!

BlueMax wrote: ↑ Really, I should add RivaTuner to my MSI Afterburner and check if it's the CPU or GPU that's maxed out ~100%.

RTSS installs automatically when you install Afterburner (unless you cancelled that out?), all you have to do is go in Afterburner and in the monitoring click on "show in OSD" all the things you want to show there and you'll be good. Set a shortcut key to show/hide the OSD and then you'll be able to bring it up at will.

Note that they changed Afterburner at some point in the recent past so the RTSS thing doesn't show up in the tray any more; however it is still running. If you want to see the tray icon though you can go in the "User Interface" tab and uncheck the "Single Tray Icon Mode" box and then you'll be able to see RTSS in the tray too. Not really necessary though unless you want to change the size/colours of the OSD as most of the options you can just set in Afterburner.

Anyway I'm pretty sure your GPU would be closer to 100% than the CPU but goes depend on the game, go ahead and take a look with the OSD/overlay and see what you find.