I have an Intel i7-4770 CPU (from 2013) and I don’t think I have ever been CPU-bound so I would rather not spend money on upgrading it. However, I want to upgrade my graphics card to a Radeon RX 7600. My motherboard supports PCIE 3.0 which the RX 7600 is fine with.
Is there anything I should look out for? I’m worried that I’m missing something that will prevent me from running a 2023 video card on hardware ten years older than that.
(In case anyone is curious, my current video card is a GeForce GTX 960. It has been good enough for Diablo 2 Resurrected but I don’t think it will be able to handle Baldur’s Gate 3.)
No, don’t listen to those who’re so scared of being Bottlenecked™. Unless your upgrade is hilariously lopsided (like buying a RTX 4090 for an Intel Sandy Bridge platform), it’s likely to be the best upgrade per dollar spent.
Do think about your upgrade path in the future, like, are you planning on an entirely new PC soon? The other factor in an upgrade is also the dollar per time value; no point spending $200+ when you’re getting a new PC next year, for example.
I went with a GTX 1070 for an i7 920, that extended that platform for another 3.5 years. Played quite a few games too. Carried the GPU into the new system for another 2 years! Pascal was truly an amazing generation.