Potential upgrade options?

So, what I’m really trying to wrap my head around is the actual logic behind buying a graphics card. Is it better to just drop the cash on a high-end beast and ride it out for years, or does it make more sense to pick up a mid-range card every couple of years? I'm trying to figure out which path isn't just flushing money down the drain.

As it stands, I'm running everything on an old Samsung SyncMaster P2770HD at 1920x1080 that’s been sitting on my desk for about seven years now, powered by a GTX 970.

I’ve been eyeing an upgrade to a 2560x1440 setup, specifically looking at the Alienware AW2721H.
That brings me to a few questions regarding the jump. For instance, if I want to be truly future-proof, am I actually going to need a monitor with G-Sync? It seems like a pretty steep price hike just for that feature...

Regarding the GPU itself, we go back to my initial dilemma. Given that I currently have a GTX 970, should I be aiming for a GTX 1070, a GTX 1080, a GTX 1080ti, or would it perhaps make more sense to look toward Q3 2017 and grab something like a 2070?

The goal here is to hit a max resolution of 2560x1440 with video settings cranked as high as they can go—this is strictly for gaming. Which of these paths actually makes the most sense from a practical standpoint, and why?

Look, at the end of the day, it’s simple: the more you pay, the more music you get. 😁
Right now, the RX 480 is a good value for hitting that FHD sweet spot; you basically don't have to compromise on settings at all (assuming the devs didn't totally butcher the optimization, obviously). If you're aiming higher than FHD, nothing is really "too much." If you want to hit 4K, even two 1080Tis wouldn't be enough. In your specific case, I think a GTX 1070 would be plenty for that resolution, though a GTX 1080 wouldn't be overkill either. You can play perfectly fine with a 1070, but since you mentioned futureproofing, well—the stronger, the better.
G-Sync/FreeSync doesn't really have anything to do with futureproofing; those are just very useful features to have when you're dropping serious cash on a monitor.

Btw, what else is in the build?

What do you mean Samsung? What else is even left in this build?

You can still pull off 1440p with a GTX 970.
Upgrading to a GTX 1060 or an RX 480/580 isn't going to be much of a leap for you.

The GTX 1070 is great for 1440p and will definitely keep you going for more than two years.

If I were you, I’d just wait and see if Vega drops later this year. You can still play on a new monitor with that GTX 970.

G-Sync... that's an expensive hobby.

To be clear, I’m not talking about pushing past 2K when it comes to monitors, nor am I suggesting I’d ever pick up an AMD's card. That part is obvious enough, but the real question remains: where do we draw the line? It's the same dilemma as deciding whether to grab a GTX 1080; the real issue is figuring out what actually makes sense for the wallet. Is it better to invest in something substantial now for $2267 and enjoy it for years, or should I just pick up a card for roughly $1000 and prepare to buy another one from $1000 in just a few years?

My current setup:
Samsung SyncMaster P2770HD.
1155soc, i5 3570K OC 4GHz
Corsair H80 High Performance Liquid Cooler
Corsair RAM 4x4GB, DDR3, 1600MHz
1155soc, MSI Z77A-G45 gaming
SLI (2x) Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 G1 gaming Samsung SSD 850
Samsung SSD 850 Evo 500GB
Corsair hx850i
1TB HDD
500GB HDD
nzxt phantom 410

What I'm planning to buy:
i5-7600K
Corsair 2x8GB DDR4 3000 C15, CMK16GX4M2B30C15
Gigabyte GA-Z270-Gaming K3
GPU ????

Ryan Gonzalez4 said:To be clear, I’m not talking about pushing past 2K when it comes to monitors, nor am I suggesting I’d ever pick up an AMD's card. That part is obvious enough, but the real question remains: where do we draw the line? It's the same dilemma as deciding whether to grab a GTX 1080; the real issue is figuring out what actually makes sense for the wallet. Is it better to invest in something substantial now for $2267 and enjoy it for years, or should I just pick up a card for roughly $1000 and prepare to buy another one from $1000 in just a few years?

My current setup:
Samsung SyncMaster P2770HD.
1155soc, i5 3570K OC 4GHz
Corsair H80 High Performance Liquid Cooler
Corsair RAM 4x4GB, DDR3, 1600MHz
1155soc, MSI Z77A-G45 gaming
SLI (2x) Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 G1 gaming Samsung SSD 850
Samsung SSD 850 Evo 500GB
Corsair hx850i
1TB HDD
500GB HDD
nzxt phantom 410

What I'm planning to buy:
i5-7600K
Corsair 2x8GB DDR4 3000 C15, CMK16GX4M2B30C15
Gigabyte GA-Z270-Gaming K3
GPU ????

Upgrading an i5 to another i5 isn't really an upgrade. In my book, swapping CPUs like that is a waste of cash.

Exactly, there's really no point in upgrading the whole platform. If you're actually going to bother with an update, it only makes sense if you're moving up to an i7 or a Ryzen 5/7. Since you've already got liquid cooling and an unlocked CPU, I guess you could just overclock it, slap in a new GPU, and call it a day.

The benchmarks show about a 25% performance jump from that i5 to the newer i5 model, which leaves me wondering if I should even bother stepping up to an i7 just for gaming purposes. As for my current processor—I can't quite put my finger on why—but when I try to run Star Citizen, the whole system starts acting up; the CPU usage spikes to 100% and everything becomes an unplayable mess. I'm not entirely sure how much of that is just due to Star Citizen being a notoriously unoptimized, work-in-progress disaster, but a buddy of mine with a pretty similar build doesn't seem to run into these exact issues at all...

When you're gaming, there's honestly less than a 10% performance gap between an i7 running at 4GHz and a Ryzen 5/7 when paired with a mid-range GPU. If your friend has a similar setup and everything is running smoothly, I guess the issue might be on your end—maybe some background processes or a Windows Update are eating up your resources?

crimsonstag84 said:When you're gaming, there's honestly less than a 10% performance gap between an i7 running at 4GHz and a Ryzen 5/7 when paired with a mid-range GPU. If your friend has a similar setup and everything is running smoothly, I guess the issue might be on your end—maybe some background processes or a Windows Update are eating up your resources?

Nothing is actually notifying me that I have a problem in that regard. Furthermore, the issue seems strictly isolated to Star Citizen. For instance, Dishonored 2—which everyone seemed to complain about regarding its optimization—well, it runs flawlessly on my rig without a single hiccup...
So, I’m honestly not even sure why the processor is giving me grief specifically with Star Citizen.

Hmm, so I suppose the logical conclusion is to pick up a narrower, newer monitor, grab a new graphics card—though I'm still undecided on which specific model to go with—and perhaps overclock the processor even more than I am currently? I can't say for certain how stable all of that would be, though; my motherboard isn't exactly top-tier, and since my cooling solution is nearly five years old, I'd need to see how it handles the temperatures first.

Man, you really should have mentioned the fact that you're running TWO GTX 970s in SLI here. 😬 In that case, jumping to something that performs less than a GTX 1070 makes zero sense; it would basically be a sidegrade, or even a straight-up downgrade in games that actually utilize SLI properly.
Swapping out the whole platform isn't worth it either, especially if you're just moving to another i5.

So, like you were told—get an unlocked processor, a solid motherboard, liquid cooling => overclock that thing well, throw in at least a GTX 1070, and you're set. And obviously, grab a new monitor since you're aiming for 1440p anyway.
If you're absolutely dead set on a CPU upgrade, go with a Ryzen or maybe an i7 if you're sticking with Intel, but that's going to be a massive upgrade involving some serious cash.

Adam Moore3 said:Man, you really should have mentioned the fact that you're running TWO GTX 970s in SLI here. 😬 In that case, jumping to something that performs less than a GTX 1070 makes zero sense; it would basically be a sidegrade, or even a straight-up downgrade in games that actually utilize SLI properly.
Swapping out the whole platform isn't worth it either, especially if you're just moving to another i5.

So, like you were told—get an unlocked processor, a solid motherboard, liquid cooling => overclock that thing well, throw in at least a GTX 1070, and you're set. And obviously, grab a new monitor since you're aiming for 1440p anyway.
If you're absolutely dead set on a CPU upgrade, go with a Ryzen or maybe an i7 if you're sticking with Intel, but that's going to be a massive upgrade involving some serious cash.

Between the monitor and a decent GPU, we're looking at roughly 15 bucks. $0.00 As for Ryzen, I'm not sure how much sense that makes when it isn't significantly faster in single-core or even quad-core tasks compared to what I've seen—I actually looked into the Ryzen 7 1800x versus the i5 7600K myself, and it seems like most people still argue that Multi Core performance isn't even being fully utilized in gaming yet, so why bother?

Honestly, jumping from an i5 to another i5 is just a waste of time.
The only move worth making is grabbing a 7700K and overclocking it as close to 5GHz as you can—that’ll actually give you a noticeable boost over a standard i5. Otherwise, look at a Ryzen 5/7. You'll get steady FPS on a 60Hz screen, and you're getting more horsepower for the future.

As for the GPU, I'd say just buy the monitor first and see how those two GTX 970s handle things. They should be enough for 1440p if SLI is working properly, though memory might end up being a bottleneck. If not, a GTX 1070 is a solid pick for pushing 1440p; the 1080 is way too overpriced for what you actually get out of it.

If you're actually worried about futureproofing, an Intel chip is going to beat a standard i5 because, as wiredotter14 pointed out, it simply has "more horsepower." The current trend is all about optimizing games to squeeze more performance out of multiple cores. Take Vulkan, for example. One of its biggest advantages is how much better it handles distributing workloads across several cores.
So, if you're already running an i5 and looking for longevity, upgrading to a newer i5 is just throwing money away. If you're determined to make the jump to Intel, though, you should aim for the i7. But man, that's a pricey move 🙂

Adam Moore3, it’s going to take forever for any Core i9 to actually overtake the i7 7700K in gaming performance, even when running Vulkan. A Core i7 just isn't a great value proposition for gaming compared to the i7K; that's simply not how they were designed.

The Core i5 is worth it because you get decent futureproofing, especially since Intel's competition is looking weak right now. Even then, the i7 7700 stands alone, making these i5 chips feel outdated and pretty much pointless.

Why grab a locked i5 when you could go with a Core i5 7400 that allows for overclocking? And instead of an unlocked i5 paired with a Z-series board, you might as well jump straight to the hexa-core Intel chips—we're talking i7 5820K territory here, which is leagues above any i5.

Let’s be real, high-end performance definitely belongs to the i7s—no debate there, especially when you're talking about gaming. But in his case, if he's looking for something more future-proof while staying in that Core i5 price bracket, then Intel just doesn't make sense compared to what else is out there. An i5 basically loses its purpose at that point. Now, if money isn't an issue, grab the i7 7700 k, push some heavy overclocking, and you can literally do whatever you want with it.

Definitely

The i7 7700k is still king for gaming

but in that $1500-$833 range, the Core i5 makes more sense now.

Testing here used a 7600K overclocked to 4.8GHz against a Core i5 7400 at 3.9 GHz—both are realistic clock speeds.
The i5 was hovering somewhere around there; maybe slightly worse in minimum FPS overall, but not across the board.
Still, the trend is moving toward the Core i5 pulling ahead of the i7.

Bottom line: the Core i5 7600 + B250 combo ends up being significantly cheaper than an i7 7700k paired with a Z270 and a decent cooler.

Yeah, that Core i5 is getting squeezed from both sides. You've got the G4560 pushing up from the bottom and the Core i7 pulling from the top 😁

My bad, forgot the link 😵😵

Interesting test

To follow up on that point -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE7s...tu.be&t=28m11s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH6R...tu.be&t=17m20s

The guy gave a perfect explanation here.

It’s pretty wild how much smoother the gameplay feels in GTA V on Ryzen. We're talking about a 60 FPS experience versus the 6 FPS mess you get with an i5. And the guy specifically pointed out that this isn't just some statistical fluke or a background process hogging resources; during the actual benchmarks, the i5 just constanty stutters and hitches every single time he runs it. The best part? This game was released before Ryzen was even a thing on the market, so things are only going to get better and better for Ryzen thanks to those extra threads.