Is there any value in upgrading my videocard at this time; or is my system limited by my monitor? The only game i play and care for is TF2. At full boat, It runs at about 88-104 fps but drops frames here and there, I want to illuminate that.
If anyone is on top of this type of hardware bottleneck decisions, your 2¢ is greatly appreciated.
If you’re on Linux, Vega and Polaris seem to be better supported by the open source driver(s) and both RX580 (even 470/480/570) and Vega will give a significant performance boost vs. what you have currently.
You’ve got a good cpu, (I personally have a 4690K ) all you need is to upgrade your GPU. If you don’t want to dish out a tone of cash, get a used RX4xx / RX5xx card and you will get better performance and longevity out of your system.
Your card will struggle to drive that monitor (gaming) at 60hz 4k (i.e., it won’t at any sort of reasonable detail level). Anything below a Vega 64 or GTX 1080 IMHO would definitely benefit from an upgrade to drive games at 4k on that display.
Some say Vega 64 is inadequate for 4k, i’m running one on my TV PC on a 4k HDR display and its pretty good IMHO. But either way, given you’ve got a 4k monitor, you’ve got plenty of room for card upgrade to better use it IMHO.
So, depends what you want to do. If you want to do 4k gaming, a card upgrade definitely would be of benefit. If you don’t care for games in 4k and 1080p is enough then if current performance doing that is OK, don’t bother.
I don’t think TF2 is particularly heavy on resources, if that’s all you care about then you’re probably fine.
TF2 is an old game, but its grown to be a bit of a pig. I don’t really think a better video card will fix this. You really should upgrade your video card if you want to play other games in 4k, but not TF2. I’m certain the fps drops aren’t GPU related.