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4070 or 6800XT? Upgrade CPU or nay? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/pcmasterrace

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Hi guys! So I'm considering upgrading my...veteran PC. Currently, a Core i7 6700 with an Nvidia GTX1070, 16GB RAM running from a Gigabyte Z170 Gaming K3 (PCIe 3.0) mobo. I'm currently considering to upgrade the GPU to a 6800XT, although I saw the 4070 for a bit cheaper, maybe ~80USD less. I've posted this earlier, and got a helpful reply making me aware both of these cards are already PCIe 4.0, and while the CPU might be a bit bottlenecked, it should be a noticeable performance increase. I've got an additional comment saying otherwise, that even currently with the 1070 the CPU would be bottlenecking. I was not able to reply to these, as my post (on FOSS gaming community) was removed. I guess this is not FOSS enough... So, PCMasterrace, what do you guys think?

Additionally, this veteran mobo would support a slight CPU increase to a 7700, which on the second hand market it wouldn't be all that much money (for what I reckon, not that much performance increase, either). What do you guys think? What should I do?

Thanks!

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[–] iopq 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When using such a powerful GPU, might as well jump to the DDR 5 platform. You will get a lot of benefits like being able to use faster storage. It won't impact gaming outside of loading times, but overall snappiness of the system will be noticeable

I don't think there's a difference between PCIe 5 and 4 since current hardware can't use those speeds (neither gaming nor storage will have a noticable difference), but 3 to 4 will have an impact

Also I'm not sure if your mobo supports ReBAR, but that's another improvement for certain titles

I say go for the GPU that will benefit your use case the most.

AMD has more VRAM. There are games coming out that actually use more than 12GB at 4K. But in ray tracing it's just slower, upscaling looks worse, FSR 3 is not fully fixed yet.

That said, Nvidia is cringe in Linux so I won't be purchasing an Nvidia card next, just too many bugs in Wayland

[–] uranibaba 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you know if intel or amd is better when running linux?

[–] iopq 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Both run great, Intel runs hotter but has more cores so it can do a lot of multithreaded tasks faster.

AMD has the best watt for watt efficiency in gaming due to excessive cache in the x3d series. Something like 60W in gaming beating 150W+ is kind of amazing. If you don't have a beefy cooler or PSU you can save money going with AMD

Below the top end honestly both can be good, Intel is very cost competitive and offers a combination of good gaming perf and multi-core performance. But I do love AMD's long term support for their platform. AM4 was pretty amazing, I could upgrade my 3600 to a 5800x3d and double my FPS in RTS games.

If it's not too much work, look at what motherboards you would go with and see if that affects your decision.

[–] uranibaba 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks! Yeah, the LTS options is very attractive. If a can find a motherboard I am happy with, I would prefer not to have to replace it when I upgrade CPU the next time.