Upgrade from 7700K/ 1080

[Felexiia]

Howdy lads,

currently I am using a 7700k and a 1080 with 16 GB RAMat 1080p, however it is showing its age. I am using a high-end seasonic PSU with 650 W.

I'd like to simply buy a RTX 3070 but found out it would bottleneck the CPU. So I'd like to replace my CPU and GPU. Is there a good CPU suitable for the RTX 3070 that fits with my old lga 1151 socket and PSU?

Kind regards

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Roe Jogan:

Is there a good CPU suitable for the RTX 3070 that fits with my old lga 1151 socket and PSU?

If you're lucky and know how to mod the bios/cpu, you could potentially use a 8700K or 9900K.

[Julien, cut it out.]

What's your monitor's resolution and refresh rate?
The 7700K should still be viable for many games. Imo a 7700 can offer a good experience on a 100 Hz VRR display.

With DLSS and RT, you get some great features with the new graphics card.
If I were you, I'd upgrade the graphics card first and then only decide on a CPU upgrade, based on the performance you achieve in the games of your game library.
CPU-bottleneck is just a concept. There are many variables that can lead to such a state. Ingame graphics settings, monitor resolution, game engine, etc.
In any case, it needs to be evaluated by the user and his setup. VRR and/or VSync can affect how performance is perceived.

7th gen is the best you can on that socket (chipset). You could get more cores with a Xeon CPU, but that's not really useful for gaming applications.

[Felexiia]

Why would I need to mod the BIOS?

[Felexiia]

Originally posted by Julien, cut it out.:

What's your monitor's resolution and refresh rate?
The 7700K should still be viable for many games. Imo a 7700 can offer a good experience on a 100 Hz VRR display.

With DLSS and RT, you get some great features with the new graphics card.
If I were you, I'd upgrade the graphics card first and then only decide on a CPU upgrade, based on the performance you achieve in the games of your game library.
CPU-bottleneck is just a concept. There are many variables that can lead to such a state. Ingame graphics settings, monitor resolution, game engine, etc.
In any case, it needs to be evaluated by the user and his setup. VRR and/or VSync can affect how performance is perceived.

7th gen is the best you can on that socket (chipset). You could get more cores with a Xeon CPU, but that's not really useful for gaming applications.

I am on a 1080p 144hz monitor, so you say I should go for the 3070? I thought my 7700k is too weak, I O'ced it to 5 ghz

[plat]

Hmm, there's a video online demonstrating someone's modifying the firmware on a Z170 board to have it function as a Z370 in order to accommodate an i9 9900K. That article stated it was just stable enough for the benchmarks. Is it a viable option for the rest of us? Mehtinks not.

Ideally OP should consider a new DDR4 board with maybe a 12th generation i5 or AMD equivalent. to go with his new gpu, keeping his drives and RAM. Sometimes retailers like Micro Center have discounts on board and cpu combos.

I mean, his 7700K seems "OK-ish" until the right time to replace that and the current board. For Windows, he's stuck on Windows 10 anyway until an upgrade is done.

[Felexiia]

Originally posted by plat:

Hmm, there's a video online demonstrating someone's modifying the firmware on a Z170 board to have it function as a Z370 in order to accommodate an i9 9900K. That article stated it was just stable enough for the benchmarks. Is it a viable option for the rest of us? Mehtinks not.

Ideally OP should consider a new DDR4 board with maybe a 12th generation i5 or AMD equivalent. to go with his new gpu, keeping his drives and RAM. Sometimes retailers like Micro Center have discounts on board and cpu combos.

I mean, his 7700K seems "OK-ish" until the right time to replace that and the current board. For Windows, he's stuck on Windows 10 anyway until an upgrade is done.

Thank you for the insight, I still don't understand why Windows 10 would become dangerous if all I do is using Steam on it, I am not even plugging in amy unknown drives and I download any third party stuff apart from nvidia drivers, what exactly would be the attack vectors?

[r.linder]

Originally posted by Roe Jogan:

Originally posted by plat:

Hmm, there's a video online demonstrating someone's modifying the firmware on a Z170 board to have it function as a Z370 in order to accommodate an i9 9900K. That article stated it was just stable enough for the benchmarks. Is it a viable option for the rest of us? Mehtinks not.

Ideally OP should consider a new DDR4 board with maybe a 12th generation i5 or AMD equivalent. to go with his new gpu, keeping his drives and RAM. Sometimes retailers like Micro Center have discounts on board and cpu combos.

I mean, his 7700K seems "OK-ish" until the right time to replace that and the current board. For Windows, he's stuck on Windows 10 anyway until an upgrade is done.

Thank you for the insight, I still don't understand why Windows 10 would become dangerous if all I do is using Steam on it, I am not even plugging in amy unknown drives and I download any third party stuff apart from nvidia drivers, what exactly would be the attack vectors?

Because Windows 11 requires an 8th gen Intel, 2000 Series AMD Ryzen, or newer CPU in order to be allowed to upgrade. 7th gen and older don't "support" it.

The 7700K is officially the best CPU you can get on that socket, you're going to have to upgrade at least your motherboard as well.

[UserNotFound]

I have a GTX 1080 too, but on much older Z97 + i7 4770K system (soon to be replaced with an R9 3900X + RX 6900 XT + 2x 16GB DDR4 4000MHz RAM), and I have it hooked up to my 4K TV, so when I play games on it, I know it's my GPU that is getting hammered at 4K. 4K is quite stressful on an older GPU, but with FSR, Godfall was actually playable at Quality setting.

Now, as for the OP system, simplest way to find out now is to snag a new GPU, and I'd suggest an RTX 3060 Ti/3070 or RX 6700 XT/6800 (non-XT) as these cards are capable of high refresh rate at 1080P. IF you install any one these cards in your system, see if the CPU bottlenecks performance or not. I think an i7 7700K @ 5GHz is still quite viable as a gaming CPU.

Now, IF performance is not good enough at 1080P, meaning CPU is holding back the performance of the new card, then it'd be time to consider a new setup/system, be it AMD or Intel.

On a side note, I have a laptop with an AMD R7 5800H + RTX 3070 + 2x 8GB DDR4 3200MHz running Win11, bear in mind mobile CPU and GPU are weaker their their desktop counterparts, and that GPU is running at PCIe 3.0 x8 (according to GPUZ) I'd still get pretty good performance in many games, even Serious Sam 3 and 4 (including Siberian Mayhem). Oh yeah, screen res is at 2560x1600, and it's a 165Hz refresh rate screen and is Gsync capable.

[plat]

Well, you can technically run Windows 11 on unsupported hardware if you jump thru a few hoops but it's not something that has guarantees attached to it. For now, people are getting Windows 11 updates. But in the future...?

I mean, who needs even the tiniest bit of uncertainty nowadays, with any little thing?

[r.linder]

Originally posted by UserNotFound:

I have a GTX 1080 too, but on much older Z97 + i7 4770K system (soon to be replaced with an R9 3900X + RX 6900 XT + 2x 16GB DDR4 4000MHz RAM), and I have it hooked up to my 4K TV, so when I play games on it, I know it's my GPU that is getting hammered at 4K. 4K is quite stressful on an older GPU, but with FSR, Godfall was actually playable at Quality setting.

Now, as for the OP system, simplest way to find out now is to snag a new GPU, and I'd suggest an RTX 3060 Ti/3070 or RX 6700 XT/6800 (non-XT) as these cards are capable of high refresh rate at 1080P. IF you install any one these cards in your system, see if the CPU bottlenecks performance or not. I think an i7 7700K @ 5GHz is still quite viable as a gaming CPU.

Now, IF performance is not good enough at 1080P, meaning CPU is holding back the performance of the new card, then it'd be time to consider a new setup/system, be it AMD or Intel.

On a side note, I have a laptop with an AMD R7 5800H + RTX 3070 + 2x 8GB DDR4 3200MHz running Win11, bear in mind mobile CPU and GPU are weaker their their desktop counterparts, and that GPU is running at PCIe 3.0 x8 (according to GPUZ) I'd still get pretty good performance in many games, even Serious Sam 3 and 4 (including Siberian Mayhem). Oh yeah, screen res is at 2560x1600, and it's a 165Hz refresh rate screen and is Gsync capable.

It's definite that the 7700K will bottleneck a 3070, being that it's similar to a 3600 or 3700X, both of which have been known to bottleneck the 2080 Ti and 3080, even at 4K. Older CPUs just can't pull the weight, they aren't fast enough, though overclocking makes it easier, 4 core chips are just low end nowadays regardless and will become a bottleneck factor regardless of how fast the cores are. I experienced this first-hand with a 3900X, it's just not fast enough to unlock the full potential of any 2080 Ti, 3080, 6900-XT, etc. especially if you don't overclock it and significantly reduce its lifespan.

Games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey react relatively poorly to quad-core CPUs in comparison to hexa-core+ CPUs. In those instances, the 7700K can get absolutely creamed.