The obvious bottleneck?

Core i5 3570k OC'd to 4.6GHz

MSI R7850 Power Edition OC 950MHz

Asus P8Z77-V LX

Corsair Gaming Series 600w PSU

8GB of Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz

Sandisk Extreme 240GB SSD

Seagate Barracuda 500GB

The above system is what I have been running since mid 2012 without any change to the clock speeds or any new parts whatsoever.

Now this has done me fine for all the games I've wanted to play, though I've not played any new titles since 2013, so new games are going going to weigh a bit heavily on the system.

Over the next couple of months I need to bring it up to speed with the likes of DOOM, Overwatch and whatever is going to be released in the next 3 years and push as much longevity from the system as possible without spending too many $$$.

As far as I understand the graphics card is by far the biggest bottleneck here for gaming. Just how far behind is the CPU (@4.6GHz) by modern standards? If I say, wait for the RX480 release and pick one up for $200, would the system about fall into line for my needs for the next couple of years - I don't need above 1080p?

What I'm not interested in doing is spending $800 on a GTX 1080 and then having my CPU bottleneck it... then having to change the CPU which will probably mean changing the mobo etc. I'm just trying to use what I've got to play contemporary games at 1080p for good value.

Many thanks for any help you can lend!

With a 4.6GHz i5 3570K, you would have no problems with a GTX 1080. But, like you said, it's $800. At 1080p resolution, the 480 should be fine for a couple of years.

As for your 1080p question, I would recommend increasing refresh rate before moving to 4k, especially for Overwatch. On screen movement is smooth and fluid at 120Hz - 144Hz, keeping the on screen image perfectly clear while you're turning quickly or looking around. It's a must have for competitive shooters...

Wait for RX480 and GTX1060 see what's better in price/performance then pick up

wait for 480X

Thanks for your input all. Pretty much as was expected with the bonus of not being aware that my CPU in its current tune still holds its own pretty well.

Will be waiting for the RX480 / 1060 as suggested and pick up one of the two. Thank you.

Your CPU is 4-5 times faster than the CPU in the ps4 and will be at least 2x faster than the CPU in the ps5

Your CPU is ahead of modern standards (i5 at 4.6ghz is extremely fast and it's not cheap to get that type of performance).

@mastershake575 I find that very interesting/surprising. Didn't appreciate that was the case and shows how much more dependent games are on GPUs than CPUs as things stand.

More surprising as I didn't pay *that* much for that processor back in 2012, not cheap but no more than $400 (came with a barebones mobo bundle) iirc. Came in that state of overclock from a vendor here in the UK with a 2 year warranty. Has a corsair Hydro Series H60 CPU cooler on it and has been going for 4 years perfectly well.

With that info I'm now giving thought to something like a GTX 1070 once they shed some cost post-hype

+1.

@humanbob1: Even the today's best i5, the Skylake i5 6600K, would be slower against an Ivy Bridge if the Ivy Bridge is clocked at 4,6GHz and the Skylake is at stock clock (3,5GHz).

Without competition after Sandy Bridge, Intel didn't improve their IPC and games usually don't push much, so even after 4 generations, we have smaller performance upgrade than Sandy Bridge was to Nehalem architecture...

I sincerely hope the CPU in next gen PS and Xbox will be faster than Ivy Bridge... At least in the clock for clock comparison. I don't expect them to run their CPU as 3+ GHz.

PS4 has two Athlon 5150 (quad jaguar cores at 1,6GHz) inside, which means only 2x25w.

So if they are so limited from power consumption, I highly doubt they can do anything against Intel.

On the other hand Intel has a monster at 35w...

So in order AMD to make PS4Neo's CPUs competitive to today's Intel desktop CPUs they need something, which in various religions called "a miracle"...

From what Ive read it looks like PS4 Neo will be running a 8 core 2.1 ghz Zen "Lite". The cpu will have less L2 cache and lacking L3 cache vs normal Zen I do believe. Not sure if it will have SMT ability or not, SMT is like hyperthreading.

I didn't mean an updated ps4, I meant an actual next gen console.

Well, this is hard to predict...

From what I hear they plan to release new consoles every 4-5 years (and not 7-8, like PS3. XB360).

So if both companies release a new console now, we will have a new console near 2020-2021...

And who knows what CPUs we will have... Maybe 5nm-7nm 16 cores with Quad Threading (1C to 4T)?

And we also need AMD to stay alive till 2020. :P

My quote was referring to whatever console there releasing in the next 12 months (I assumed there won't be a ps5 named after the neo and they will call the true next gen one ps6 but I might be wrong on that).

4-5 years makes more sense. But the only way I am buying one of them is if they keep BC with PS4/Xbone.

Ah. Well then a Ivy Bridge at 4.6 will beat it yes. no doubt about that.