8 year old potato needs replacing

[Squaretatoes]

I'm not usually a "must play at launch" guy, but given time, either Bethesda or the mod community will make Starfiled playable. But not on my desktop, because it's old. I7-4790k and 970 old.
With a £1500 budget, is my best bet to wait for the midrange RX7000's to come out before making any decisions?

 

[Scott]

I know this sounds ridiculous but £1500 very much gets you on the playing field rather than challenging for cups.

What monitor are you pairing with? The ideal GPU at the moment is the 6950XT, as it's a bargain compared to the rest. The 6700XT and the 7600 aren't that far away from each other, with them being the same price. Mid-range is going to cost a bit more unfortunately.

 

[Squaretatoes]

My current monitor is 1080p, but I have a seperate fund to upgrade on that front (it's about 10 or 11 years old, so it'll either die any day now or outlive me). Guessing I shouldn't look at anything past 1440p.
I was kind of being optimistic, and hoping that when AMD get around to releasing the 7700/7800 (I'm pretty sure there'll be some offerings between the 7600 and 7900s, right?), it might depress the prices on last-gen cards a touch and get me a bit more bang for my buck, if I can hang off until autumn/winter to buy.
The bottom line is, there are new games coming out that I want to play, and my current rig isn't up to it. The cost of everything else being what it is... well, you know.
I suppose I could learn to not hate game controllers and get it on Xbox, but the moment my niece and nephews lay eyes on the damn thing, it'll be endless squabbling and fighting. At least a PC with no RGB on it has the plausible deniability of being "just for work, no games on that".

 

[Scott]

To give some context. Below is how I would spec a gaming platform right now. It's the best gaming CPU/Platform available and will be supported for upgrades in the future. I've paired it with the bottom spec AMD GPU that I would be willing to go for. This is the cheapest option to get into reasonable 1080p gaming. You can see what it does with the budget.

Even a low end 7600 GPU is out of reach at this budget IMO.

Case
CORSAIR 4000D AIRFLOW TEMPERED GLASS GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Eight Core CPU (4.2GHz-5.0GHz/104MB w/3D V-CACHE/AM5)
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF GAMING B650-PLUS WIFI (DDR5, USB 3.2, 6Gb/s)
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB DDR5 5600MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
8GB AMD RADEON™ RX 6600 - HDMI, DP - DX® 12
Graphics Card Support Bracket
NONE (BRACKET INCLUDED AS STANDARD ON 4070 Ti AND ABOVE)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 6900MB/R, 5000MB/W)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
2TB CORSAIR CORE XT MP600 NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD (up to 5000 MB/R, 4400 MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead, 1.0mm Core)
Processor Cooling
CORSAIR H100i ELITE RGB High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
ONBOARD 2.5Gbe LAN PORT
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 11 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00003]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10/11 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Firefox™
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 7 to 10 working days
Price: £1,648.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am5-pc/yc2dQtjDgw/

 

[Scott]

With that being said, if you opted for a previous generation platform (Not as powerful, certainly not at 1080p, and no future upgrade potential), you can get yourself the 7600 from AMD on budget. Note that you still won't get past this sort of level without cutting back on some of the nice to haves. I would never recommend sacrificing any of the platform for the sake of the GPU though, the GPU is the first thing to be replaced.

Also note that this is the starting point for the AMD GPUs. It's an 8GB card, which is aimed squarely at 1080p gaming. If you had aspirations of getting into a good level of 1440p gaming with AAA titles then you would need a stronger card with more vRAM.

Case
CORSAIR 4000D AIRFLOW TEMPERED GLASS GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D Eight Core CPU (3.4GHz-4.5GHz/100MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF GAMING B550-PLUS (DDR4, USB 3.2, 6Gb/s) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3600MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
8GB AMD RADEON™ RX 7600 - HDMI, DP - DX® 12
Graphics Card Support Bracket
NONE (BRACKET INCLUDED AS STANDARD ON 4070 Ti AND ABOVE)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 6900MB/R, 5000MB/W)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
2TB CORSAIR CORE XT MP600 NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD (up to 5000 MB/R, 4400 MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead, 1.0mm Core)
Processor Cooling
CORSAIR H100i ELITE RGB High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6E AX210 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 11 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00003]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10/11 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 7 to 10 working days
Price: £1,492.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/TpUcSJCw6W/

 

[Scott]

Cutting back on all the nice to haves and getting something competent that should fit the bill (still previous generation on CPU and GPU). Gets you in the door of 1440p. The 6750XT is a decent 1440p offering. It's not blistering, but it's a decent card.

Case
CORSAIR 4000D AIRFLOW TEMPERED GLASS GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D Eight Core CPU (3.4GHz-4.5GHz/100MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF GAMING B550-PLUS (DDR4, USB 3.2, 6Gb/s) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3600MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
12GB AMD RADEON™ RX 6750 XT - HDMI, DP - DX® 12
Graphics Card Support Bracket
NONE (BRACKET INCLUDED AS STANDARD ON 4070 Ti AND ABOVE)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
512GB SOLIDIGM P44 PRO GEN 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 7000MB/sR, 4700MB/sW)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB CORSAIR CORE XT MP600 NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD (up to 5000 MB/R, 3500 MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead, 1.0mm Core)
Processor Cooling
CORSAIR H100i ELITE RGB High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6E AX210 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 11 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00003]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10/11 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 7 to 10 working days
Price: £1,506.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/PCEqejRxUz/

 

[Scott]

Hopefully this gives insight into what I meant initially. To blow the roof off with mid-level modern AMD hardware it's going to take £2k for 1440p.

 

[Squaretatoes]

Thanks man. Gives me a lot to think about.