Question: What is the best CPU for a GTX 1080, that will not kill my pockets.
My thoughts: 1600, maybe 1700 (but might be overkill)
Some background:
I got a like new EVGA GTX 1080 FTW for $200 ( a solid upgrade from a r9 270x), and my current system has an AMD 8320 @4.2 ghz. I never overclocked the cpu until recently because I noticed the 1080 was held back by the cpu thus I am sitting at 4.2 ghz.
While the overclock has significantly raised FPS and utilization from the card, needless to say, the 1080 is still held back.
So I am working on getting a new cpu and motherboard and my heart is going towards a ryzen 1600. I am wondering if even then that will create a bottleneck?
I am well aware that a movement from 8320 to 1600 is a significant upgrade, but I have looked at benchmarks that showed other cpu’s getting more FPS even a difference of 25+ fps.
It’s been about 5-6 years since i have had my cpu so i wouldn’t mind forking out a few extra bucks so that it can serve a long time like the AMD 8320 (it will forever be in my heart).
And what is your budget? The amount of money that will kill your pockets varies depending on the pockets lol
A 7700K is the best gaming CPU right now. However, once you get past there is matters less. A 1600 OCed is also a good option. Much cheaper. 12 threads for better multitasking and streaming.
For games the 1600(x) is great value. If you also do some work which can utilize the additional cores go with the 1700 instead.
The fastest CPU for games is the 7700K right now, but Ryzen will get you into spitting distance while providing more cores for productivity and also being cheaper.
You’ll be fine with an R5 1600, but if you don’t plan on overclocking, I’d go with the 1600x. You’re basically going to be paying $30 for 0.4GHz across all cores.
As @pFtpr said, the 7700K is going to be the best CPU money can buy for gaming, but I don’t believe you’ll see a noticeable increase over the 1600(x) on a 1080.
My advice is to aim as close to 3200MHz b-die memory as you can while not going below 16GB. I think you can accomplish that with $400.
EDIT: Looks like 16GB isn’t going to be doable with $400 at 3200MHz.
I really appreciate the guidance. I was thinking of getting the 1600 and OC’ing it but I have to learn how to do it and considering that my wife uses this computer I cannot have an unexpected crash when I am not at the house to fix it.
I used the pre built OC feature on the AsRock motherboard which works fine but I am sure it has a generic voltage that is causing unnecessary heat.
EDIT:
I noticed that the price difference between the 7700k and the 1700 is only a few bucks off, is there any reason to consider the 1700 over the 7700k?
The 7700K is faster in single threaded applications but the 1700 has twice the cores. Games currently profit more from single thread performance than cores, making the 7700 the best CPU for gaming. Applications which can make use of all 8 cores will in turn run significantly faster on the 1700.
So it depends on your use case which one is the better one. I personally wouldn’t buy a quad core in 2017 anymore. With the core count being on the rise now future games be optimized to utilize the additional cores better.
Price edits means that I am going to buy it from Microcenter. I am opting for 8 gb of ram rather than 16gb because I can easily obtain that in the future.
I haven’t followed Ryzen RAM + Mobos closely because I don’t intend to buy a system right now, so I can’t comment on those. A related thread just popped up though, keep an eye on that
There have also been several people asking for which motherboard to get for Ryzen
Good call. The X370 boards generally have better VRM implementations too in addition to better quality. Will last longer when overclocked which is something you’re gonna want to do on any non X Ryzen
Ryzen is fairly sensitive to RAM speed btw. Latency not so much. You wanna shoot for at least DDR4-3000 for optimal performance especially in games.