Balanced CPU / GPU or Weak CPU / Strong GPU

[Cryoflair]

Me again, refunds have come in and I happened upon another $120. $520 budget. (Budget for motherboard is an additional $80-100)
As per the title:

Ryzen 7 1700
RX 580 8GB
Reasons to consider: I have a Freesync monitor. If I get the I5 8400 instead I'll probably put the extra money towards buying a drawing tablet (I have my eyes on the H420).

Ryzen 3 1200
GTX 1070
Reasons to consider: Upgrading the CPU is cheaper ([1200-->1700] [$94-->$220]) than upgrading the GPU.

Your thoughts?

[36564176]

Cryoflair님이 먼저 게시:

Me again, refunds have come in and I happened upon another $120. $520 budget.
As per the title:

Ryzen 7 1700
RX 580 8GB
Reasons to consider: I have a Freesync monitor. If I get the I5 8400 instead I'll probably put the extra money towards buying a drawing tablet (I have my eyes on the H420).

Ryzen 3 1200
GTX 1070
Reasons to consider: Upgrading the CPU is cheaper ([1200-->1700] [$94-->$220]) than upgrading the GPU.

Your thoughts?

how about get the i3-8100 so you get better performance than the 1200 while being cheaper than the 8400 so you dont lose too much power.

[ugafan]

Cryoflair님이 먼저 게시:

$520 budget.

do you have other money set aside for motherboard and ram? what is your total budget?

[Cryoflair]

Interesting, downgrading to an 8100 would give me $60 more to play with when compared to the 8400, but I'm not sure what to put that towards. Also, would that be better or worse than the 1200? The websites I used to compare the two showed conflicting results game-debate.com says that the 1200 is vastly superior while cpu.userbenchmark.com and cpubenchmark.net puts the 8400 at being firmly ahead.

ugafan님이 먼저 게시:

Cryoflair님이 먼저 게시:

$520 budget.

do you have other money set aside for motherboard and ram? what is your total budget?

I already have all of the other parts for a full build except for the CPU, GPU, and Motherboard. I can afford to spend $80-100 for the motherboard.

[36564176]

Cryoflair님이 먼저 게시:

Interesting, downgrading to an 8100 would give me $60 more to play with when compared to the 8400, but I'm not sure what to put that towards. Also, would that be better or worse than the 1200? The websites I used to compare the two showed conflicting results game-debate.com says that the 1200 is vastly superior while cpu.userbenchmark.com and cpubenchmark.net puts the 8400 at being firmly ahead.

dont use game-debate.com for hardware comparison.

[Cryoflair]

Tualatin님이 먼저 게시:

Cryoflair님이 먼저 게시:

Interesting, downgrading to an 8100 would give me $60 more to play with when compared to the 8400, but I'm not sure what to put that towards. Also, would that be better or worse than the 1200? The websites I used to compare the two showed conflicting results game-debate.com says that the 1200 is vastly superior while cpu.userbenchmark.com and cpubenchmark.net puts the 8400 at being firmly ahead.

dont use game-debate.com for hardware comparison.

Very well, I'll avoid them from now on.

[Arya]

Always go for a balanced build. CPU performance is vital, the GPU defines your maximum FPS but the CPU defines your minimum and average FPS.

For a joke, I recently hooked my heavily-overclocked GTX1080 up to a much abused Pentium GA-4560. And lo and behold the performance was pathetic, the ill-fortuned Pentium acted like an anchor dragging down the framerate. I never got above 40 FPS in DOOM. On the other hand, that GPU on exactly the same settings and level gets 140 FPS with it's usual dance partner, an i7 8700K

A worthy alternative to the R7 2700 is the i7 8700K. i7s are a little tricky to work with, they're more demanding than AMD CPUs. They need more cooling, and won't deliver their full potential unless you overclock them. Or at the very least disable Intel's ultra-conservative clock limits and let the CPU hit 4.7 on all six cores. Once you do find the sweet spot, the K series will easily outperform any Ryzen CPU, for about the same cost.

[Cryoflair]

Wolfey님이 먼저 게시:

Always go for a balanced build. CPU performance is vital, the GPU defines your maximum FPS but the CPU defines your minimum and average FPS.

For a joke, I recently hooked my heavily-overclocked GTX1080 up to a much abused Pentium GA-4560. And lo and behold the performance was pathetic, the ill-fortuned Pentium acted like an anchor dragging down the framerate. I never got above 40 FPS in DOOM. On the other hand, that GPU on exactly the same settings and level gets 140 FPS with it's usual dance partner, an i7 8700K

A worthy alternative to the R7 2700 is the i7 8700K. i7s are a little tricky to work with, they're more demanding than AMD CPUs. They need more cooling, and won't deliver their full potential unless you overclock them. Or at the very least disable Intel's ultra-conservative clock limits and let the CPU hit 4.7 on all six cores. Once you do find the sweet spot, the K series will easily outperform any Ryzen CPU, for about the same cost.

Balanced build it is then, but one thing.
Say I wanted to upgrade something, what should it be? (Later down the line in 5 or so years)
Upgrade to 16 gb ram, upgrade to the higher end cards, buy another card and run them in SLI / Crossfire, or the CPU?
Full build:
GA-AX370-Gaming
R7 1700
RX 580 8GB
Vengeance LPX 8GB x1
Evga 650 GQ
Western Digital Caviar Blue
Rosewill Nautilus

[Arya]

Cryoflair님이 먼저 게시:

Balanced build it is then, but one thing.
Say I wanted to upgrade something, what should it be? (Later down the line in 5 or so years)
Upgrade to 16 gb ram, upgrade to the higher end cards, buy another card and run them in SLI / Crossfire, or the CPU?
Full build:
GA-AX370-Gaming
R7 1700
RX 580 8GB
Vengeance LPX 8GB x1
Evga 650 GQ
Western Digital Caviar Blue
Rosewill Nautilus

Speaking honestly, I don't think you'll get five years with this build. With only 8GB of RAM you'll see a year at most before you need to upgrade, 16GB is really the minimum spec now. 8GB will already compromise your performance today, and that will get worse quite quickly.

I would say the RAM and HDD would be the first to need changing, within the first twelve months. The GPOU and CPU should both last a couple of years, the CPU I'd uupgraade with the final; generation of AM4 CPUs in a couple of years. And the GPU will need upgrading whenever it stops meeting your performance needs, that could be 1-4 years away.

[Teiryn]

This mostly boils down to frame-rate target and resolution, but also what you want out from your system. For higher resolutions where you don't ouput as many frames you can usually get away with a slower cpu/ram, but on a lower resolution where you try to output many more frames a faster cpu/ram is required in order to keep up with the gpu.

[Arya]

Aura님이 먼저 게시:

This mostly boils down to frame-rate target and resolution, but also what you want out from your system. For higher resolutions where you don't ouput as many frames you can usually get away with a slower cpu/ram, but on a lower resolution where you try to output many more frames a faster cpu/ram is required in order to keep up with the gpu.

Resolution has no direct interaction with the CPU or RAM, technically you can run any resolution on any CPU or RAM and it will make no difference. As proven by the fact I'm typing this on a 4K touchscreen, running an Intel Atom CPU with 4GB of RAM.

Higher resolutions come with more Pixels, which means more work for the GPU. It can also increase the amount of VRAM needed. That only effects your graphics card, it has no impact on any other part of the system, except for the Power Supply which has to feed more power to the GPU.

[Teiryn]

Wolfey님이 먼저 게시:

Aura님이 먼저 게시:

This mostly boils down to frame-rate target and resolution, but also what you want out from your system. For higher resolutions where you don't ouput as many frames you can usually get away with a slower cpu/ram, but on a lower resolution where you try to output many more frames a faster cpu/ram is required in order to keep up with the gpu.

Resolution has no direct interaction with the CPU or RAM, technically you can run any resolution on any CPU or RAM and it will make no difference.

Higher resolutions come with more Pixels, which means more work for the GPU. It can also increase the amount of VRAM needed. That only effects your graphics card, it has no impact on any other part of the system, except for the Power Supply which has to feed more power to the GPU.

It doesn't, but higher resolution means lower fps (unless your gpu isn't hitting 100% usage), lower cpu usage and more gpu usage. Because of this a slower cpu can keep up with the gpu.

[Arya]

Aura님이 먼저 게시:

Wolfey님이 먼저 게시:

Resolution has no direct interaction with the CPU or RAM, technically you can run any resolution on any CPU or RAM and it will make no difference.

Higher resolutions come with more Pixels, which means more work for the GPU. It can also increase the amount of VRAM needed. That only effects your graphics card, it has no impact on any other part of the system, except for the Power Supply which has to feed more power to the GPU.

It doesn't, but higher resolution means lower fps (unless your gpu isn't hitting 100% usage), lower cpu usage and more gpu usage. Because of this a slower cpu can keep up with the gpu.

Why would a higher resolution lower CPU usage? That makes no sense.

Any other day I would post an HW monitor trace to demonstrate, but my PC is literally in a hundred bits on the floor right now.

[Teiryn]

Wolfey님이 먼저 게시:

Aura님이 먼저 게시:

It doesn't, but higher resolution means lower fps (unless your gpu isn't hitting 100% usage), lower cpu usage and more gpu usage. Because of this a slower cpu can keep up with the gpu.

Why would a higher resolution lower CPU usage? That makes no sense.

Any other day I would post an HW monitor trace to demonstrate, but my PC is literally in a hundred bits on the floor right now.

You can save money on the cpu if you decide to go for higher resolution instead of fps, this video proves my point: https://youtu.be/daiF6lYguN4

[Arya]

Aura님이 먼저 게시:

You can save money on the cpu if you decide to go for higher resolution instead of fps, this video proves my point: https://youtu.be/daiF6lYguN4

Again, that's not true. If anything, a higher resolution build needs a more powerful CPU because the GPU required needs a more powerful CPU. For example, a 4K build ereally should have a 2700 or 8700K.

Running a higher resolution does equate to less FPS, but that doesn't mean you can get away with a cheap CPU.

[Teiryn]

Wolfey님이 먼저 게시:

Aura님이 먼저 게시:

You can save money on the cpu if you decide to go for higher resolution instead of fps, this video proves my point: https://youtu.be/daiF6lYguN4

Again, that's not true. If anything, a higher resolution build needs a more powerful CPU because the GPU required needs a more powerful CPU. For example, a 4K build ereally should have a 2700 or 8700K.

Running a higher resolution does equate to less FPS, but that doesn't mean you can get away with a cheap CPU.

Lol, this is not true. Higher resolution is strictly gpu bound which means you are more likely to be gpu limited, and because it lowers your fps it also lowers your cpu usage. A faster cpu is Only required if your current one cannot keep up with gpu, or if the game is too cpu taxing for your current cpu. Watch the video.