Should you upgrade your CPU or GPU first for gaming?

For those itching to empty their wallets to upgrade their gaming PCs, is it better to upgrade your CPU or GPU? Seems simple enough, so let’s test it and find out! I’ve got this budget system from Cyberpower that I’ll be tinkering with to test this idea. Its stock config is what I’m calling the “GPU upgrade” option, as it’s an RTX 3060 paired with what is essentially a 3 year old mid-range CPU (even though it’s actually brand new), which is the Ryzen 4500. For the “old” GPU I’ve picked a GTX 1660 – I know it’s not the oldest or slowest but I think it’s a reasonable choice, and if you don’t feel free to let me know how you feel in the comments below! As for our “CPU upgrade” option, that’ll be a Ryzen 5600X. It’s not quite the same price bracket as GPU prices haven’t dropped as much as CPUs have of late, but I think both are fairly common upgrade paths so let’s see!

I’m testing at 1080p on what I’d call realistic settings, what you’d actually play the game at rather than just ultra-all-the-things, meaning generally between medium and high in most titles. Let’s run through the data then we can talk about how it might affect your system.

Starting with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, our “bad + bad” config with the Ryzen 4500 and GTX 1660 nets 90FPS average in game, which definitely isn’t bad. The much faster 5600X easily outperforms the 4500 in the CPU Render average – but notice the average in game FPS… It’s just 1 FPS higher! Now compare that to the slow CPU but fast GPU which is running at 116 FPS, or 26 FPS higher. That’s a significant increase from the faster card. For good measure I’m also showing what upgrading both would look like – in short, much better. 147 FPS average, up from 116 FPS with just the GPU upgrade, or 90 FPS with no upgrades.

Moving on to Microsoft Flight we get an interesting result – the CPU upgrade and base config average results are functionally identical, but the 1% lows are markedly different. The 4500 nets under 40 FPS, whereas the 5600X nets more like 54 FPS, which would make for a considerable difference in the playing experience for sure. If you upgrade the GPU instead, you’d net yourself 20 FPS more on average, and more impressive 1% low figures than even the CPU upgrade – although if you were to upgrade both you net a further 23 FPS average and 15 FPS more in the 1% lows.

CSGO is a fun one, because this is so heavily CPU bottlenecked that the GPU upgrade alone does exactly nothing. Like, literally nothing at all. May as well have not bothered. Just upgrading the CPU with the “slow” graphics card nets you exactly DOUBLE the performance, and funnily enough even upgrading the GPU as well only nets you like 80 FPS more, or around 17% more performance on the CPU upgrade alone. So, if you play CSGO, buy a new CPU.

Cyberpunk is back to the status quo, with the CPU upgrade doing relatively little, whereas the GPU upgrade gets you most of the way to the double upgrade, netting just shy of 100 FPS, up from a little over 60 FPS from the base or CPU upgrade setups. The double upgrade does have markedly better 1% low performance though, alongside a further 10 FPS on average.

Fortnite is a similar story, where the GPU upgrade offers a considerably improved experience over the base and CPU upgrade options, in fact it offers better 1% low performance than the CPU upgrade setup can run on average! The gap to the double upgrade actually isn’t all that massive, and the gap from base to the 5600X and 1660 is negligible, especially when you notice the 1% lows are actually higher on the 4500’s run. Let’s call that “trading blows”.

Finally we have Watchdogs Legion, which is one of the stranger results here.You can get more performance here, but you’ll have to upgrade both your CPU and GPU to get it. The GPU upgrade on its own does provide a full 10 FPS more performance on average, and the CPU upgrade does offer a smoother playing experience overall, but neither are earth-shattering improvements. Only once you step up to the double upgrade do you get a considerable improvement.

So how can we translate this data to your system? Well let’s say you’ve got an even slower CPU, that would add more weight to the CPU upgrade option for you. The slower your CPU, the more likely it is to be your main bottleneck. If you play lightweight games like CSGO, you should definitely consider a CPU upgrade first. On the flip side, if you have a worse graphics card, in almost all circumstances, a GPU upgrade will be the single biggest improvement you can do to get more performance in games. It’s generally pretty rare for your CPU to be the biggest bottleneck in your system – for gaming anyway – so as a general rule dedicating more funds to a graphics card is almost always going to net you better performance – regardless of your CPU.