Motherboard upgrade question:

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ThatsAgood1jay

[H]ard|Gawd
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Hi all, My current rig (specs in sig) is in desperate need of a graphics update, and I've been eyeing a Sapphire 6900XT Toxic.

The X370 Taichi only has PCIe 3.0, so obviously to use all the new graphics card, I need to upgrade the motherboard.

My question is: do I/Should I pick up a newer zen 3 processor as well? or just migrate my current Ryzen 1700 over to the new board?

Thanks.

Edit for more info: my current display is a 1440p, 140hz.
 
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You absolutely do not need to upgrade the motherboard. The GPU will run just fine at PCIe 3.0 speeds and you'll never notice the difference unless you benchmark very carefully.

If you're going to run at 4k resolutions, the 1700 (and the current motherboard) will probably keep up OK. Anything lower and you'll probably want to drop in a Zen 2 or Zen 3 CPU; Zen 3 obviously preferred unless you find a great deal on a used Zen 2 model.
 
ZodaEX said:
I'd migrate the 1700 over.
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That makes no sense. If he buys an X570 motherboard, it will only run PCIe 3.0 with a Ryzen 1700.
pitingres said:
You absolutely do not need to upgrade the motherboard. The GPU will run just fine at PCIe 3.0 speeds and you'll never notice the difference unless you benchmark very carefully.

If you're going to run at 4k resolutions, the 1700 (and the current motherboard) will probably keep up OK. Anything lower and you'll probably want to drop in a Zen 2 or Zen 3 CPU; Zen 3 obviously preferred unless you find a great deal on a used Zen 2 model.
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No, he doesn't need to upgrade the motherboard. That part I can agree with. However, at 4K, the Ryzen 1700 will hold him back. I found that earlier Ryzens and Threadrippers do not do well in some games at 4K. For example, my Threadripper 2920X averaged about the same as the 9900K on paper but when you dug into the data and actually played the game it turned out the minimum FPS of the 2920X was shockingly bad. It came in at 26FPS at stock speeds compared to the 56FPS of the 9900K. When on PBO this went up to 36FPS but a minor overclock put the 9900K to 60FPS minimum. Again, averages were about the same but that's only because the AMD's spiked super high on maximum FPS. The 9900K delivered a far smoother experience.

I've got a 2700X here running with a 6700XT and it's pretty awful doing Ghost Recon at 4K as well. People think the processor doesn't matter at 4K and that's just not quite true.
 
Dan_D said:
That makes no sense. If he buys an X570 motherboard, it will only run PCIe 3.0 with a Ryzen 1700.

No, he doesn't need to upgrade the motherboard. That part I can agree with. However, at 4K, the Ryzen 1700 will hold him back. I found that earlier Ryzens and Threadrippers do not do well in some games at 4K. For example, my Threadripper 2920X averaged about the same as the 9900K on paper but when you dug into the data and actually played the game it turned out the minimum FPS of the 2920X was shockingly bad. It came in at 26FPS at stock speeds compared to the 56FPS of the 9900K. When on PBO this went up to 36FPS but a minor overclock put the 9900K to 60FPS minimum. Again, averages were about the same but that's only because the AMD's spiked super high on maximum FPS. The 9900K delivered a far smoother experience.

I've got a 2700X here running with a 6700XT and it's pretty awful doing Ghost Recon at 4K as well. People think the processor doesn't matter at 4K and that's just not quite true.
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Thanks for the reply, my current monitor is a 1440p 140hz monitor, and I don't plan on upgrading for 4k for a while.
 
ThatsAgood1jay said:
Thanks for the reply, my current monitor is a 1440p 140hz monitor, and I don't plan on upgrading for 4k for a while.
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Then the CPU is less important, but you'd benefit from an upgrade. I'm not sure how much off hand or how much that would be worth to you. Regardless, I think the thing people lose sight of is that a system with an older CPU is going to be faster with a given video card than a faster CPU with a cheaper card. People run their mouths about matching the GPU and CPU, which frankly you don't really need to do to a degree. The concept isn't totally wrong, but I think its misunderstood.

If we take a Ryzen 1700 and pair it with an RTX 3090, it will still be faster than a 1700 would be with a lesser GPU. That being said, at 1080P you are woefully under utilizing that GPU and you would likely get performance that would feel the same out of a lesser GPU provided ray tracing and some other things didn't come into play. But it depends on the game. The point being if you have a system that never drops below 300FPS+ on a 144Hz monitor, putting in a card that will give you 500FPS makes no sense. This is really where matching the GPU and buying less can not only save you money, but makes some sense. That's not how I roll, but it is a sensible course of action. I prefer to buy ultra-high end and upgrade when something faster comes along. I know people who only buy new machines every three to five years, preferring to buy high end and not have to upgrade often or at all during the service life of the machine. Those people rarely see the effects of a machine's age until the final year or so of its service life.

2560x1440 isn't 4K but its much more demanding than 1920x1080 is. You would benefit from upgrading the CPU and the GPU, but if you had to choose only one I'd go for the GPU almost every time. However, you might want to look and see if you can upgrade that CPU without changing the motherboard. That's not only possible, but probable. That won't give you PCIe 4.0 support, but honestly that's the least of your concerns with your system specs. Early Ryzens were very weak as gaming CPU's and frankly that's not something AMD overcame until the 5000 series.
 
ThatsAgood1jay said:
Hi all, My current rig (specs in sig) is in desperate need of a graphics update, and I've been eyeing a Sapphire 6900XT Toxic.

The X370 Taichi only has PCIe 3.0, so obviously to use all the new graphics card, I need to upgrade the motherboard.

My question is: do I/Should I pick up a newer zen 3 processor as well? or just migrate my current Ryzen 1700 over to the new board?

Thanks.

Edit for more info: my current display is a 1440p, 140hz.
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You don't need to upgrade the motherboard. I'm running a 3080 Ti on PCIe 3.0 x16 and it's fine. If anything your 1700 will bottleneck you more than the PCIe 3.0 bus. Check out this article with a 5950X and 3080 comparing PCIe 4.0 vs 3.0

You're lucky you have the Asrock X370 Taichi, with BIOS 7.04 you can support Zen 3 CPUs. I'd upgrade the BIOS and slap any Zen 3 chip. 5600X, 5800X, 5900X, or 5950X. Or you can hold out for the 5800X3D (will probably require a newer BIOS). I'm actually a big fan of that board. It initially had some BIOS quirks for me, but ended up holding up overtime. I've been running it 24/7 since launch, first as my personal gaming PC and now as a TrueNAS Scale server. 12k caps, POST code readout, 10 SATA, solid VRM, good PCIe layout, 2 NVME. The only thing it's missing is a front panel type C header.

If you're still set on upgrading the motherboard, it's a little late in the game to go to another AM4 motherboard and new CPU. You might as well consider Alder Lake or wait for AM5. You can use the 6900 XT with the 1700, it should play most titles at 1440P at 60+FPS easily, you just won't hit the super high FPS like you would with Zen 3.
 
Dopamin3 said:
You don't need to upgrade the motherboard. I'm running a 3080 Ti on PCIe 3.0 x16 and it's fine. If anything your 1700 will bottleneck you more than the PCIe 3.0 bus. Check out this article with a 5950X and 3080 comparing PCIe 4.0 vs 3.0

You're lucky you have the Asrock X370 Taichi, with BIOS 7.04 you can support Zen 3 CPUs. I'd upgrade the BIOS and slap any Zen 3 chip. 5600X, 5800X, 5900X, or 5950X. Or you can hold out for the 5800X3D (will probably require a newer BIOS). I'm actually a big fan of that board. It initially had some BIOS quirks for me, but ended up holding up overtime. I've been running it 24/7 since launch, first as my personal gaming PC and now as a TrueNAS Scale server. 12k caps, POST code readout, 10 SATA, solid VRM, good PCIe layout, 2 NVME. The only thing it's missing is a front panel type C header.

If you're still set on upgrading the motherboard, it's a little late in the game to go to another AM4 motherboard and new CPU. You might as well consider Alder Lake or wait for AM5. You can use the 6900 XT with the 1700, it should play most titles at 1440P at 60+FPS easily, you just won't hit the super high FPS like you would with Zen 3.
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Seems like a no brainer. Throw in a Zen 3 (with new pricing even) and you wouldn't miss PCIe 4.0.
 
Dopamin3 said:
You don't need to upgrade the motherboard. I'm running a 3080 Ti on PCIe 3.0 x16 and it's fine. If anything your 1700 will bottleneck you more than the PCIe 3.0 bus. Check out this article with a 5950X and 3080 comparing PCIe 4.0 vs 3.0

You're lucky you have the Asrock X370 Taichi, with BIOS 7.04 you can support Zen 3 CPUs. I'd upgrade the BIOS and slap any Zen 3 chip. 5600X, 5800X, 5900X, or 5950X. Or you can hold out for the 5800X3D (will probably require a newer BIOS). I'm actually a big fan of that board. It initially had some BIOS quirks for me, but ended up holding up overtime. I've been running it 24/7 since launch, first as my personal gaming PC and now as a TrueNAS Scale server. 12k caps, POST code readout, 10 SATA, solid VRM, good PCIe layout, 2 NVME. The only thing it's missing is a front panel type C header.

If you're still set on upgrading the motherboard, it's a little late in the game to go to another AM4 motherboard and new CPU. You might as well consider Alder Lake or wait for AM5. You can use the 6900 XT with the 1700, it should play most titles at 1440P at 60+FPS easily, you just won't hit the super high FPS like you would with Zen 3.
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Interesting, when I run performance metrics on games currently, the 970 is pegged 95%+ utilized pretty much the entire time a game is open, while the CPU will be 20-30% utilized.

Does this mean that the CPU is currently not fully committed due to the bottleneck at the GPU? Or, are the performance metrics for the CPU being skewed due to the number of cores? (sorry if this is a noob question, just trying to understand how a bottleneck will appear in performance metrics)
 
Why not buy the 6900XT and play some games on the existing system. If it feels slow, then think about upgrading the CPU if the usage metrics show it. It's not like you have to upgrade everything at the same time.
 
ThatsAgood1jay said:
Interesting, when I run performance metrics on games currently, the 970 is pegged 95%+ utilized pretty much the entire time a game is open, while the CPU will be 20-30% utilized.

Does this mean that the CPU is currently not fully committed due to the bottleneck at the GPU? Or, are the performance metrics for the CPU being skewed due to the number of cores? (sorry if this is a noob question, just trying to understand how a bottleneck will appear in performance metrics)
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The fact that you're getting 95% GPU usage means you aren't really CPU bottlenecked currently. Like Azrak just posted above me I would first just replace the GPU and then evaluate how the performance is. If unsatisfactory then you can just update the BIOS and plop in a new CPU.

The "issue" with first generation Zen and current high end GPUs is in most cases you will certainly be CPU bottlenecked. While 8 core / 16 thread is nice, most games can't take advantage of that. Games can depend on core/thread count to a degree, but in general you'll see much better FPS with a CPU with higher IPC. Zen 3 has a good bit more IPC than Zen 1, and they clock higher in general leading to a pretty significant performance uplift. This video from Hardware Unboxed explores some performance numbers across Zen 3 (Ryzen 5xxx), Zen 2 (Ryzen 3xxxx), Zen+ (Ryzen 2xxxx) and Zen (Ryzen 1xxx):



One thing to note is they're testing games at 1080P, if you're doing 1440P the performance difference won't be as much but there definitely still will be a difference.
 
AI echo what others say. The motherboard will not bottleneck that particular GPU. Try the card out and if you do not feel satisfied, drop an AMD 5000 series CPU into your current motherboard. This way, you will not need to deal with the headaches of a fresh Windows install.
 
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