@
Hir0shi
Yours is quite the dilemma. I honestly can't decide on an answer.
In my country, the cheapest 5070 Ti you can buy are cards like the MSI Shadow 3X OC or the Gigabyte RTX 5070 Ti Windforce SFF. Recently, the ASUS RTX 5070 Ti Prime OC appeared in this range and that's what I was thinking about - all of these cards cost at least $1,050. The rest of the better models are in the range of $1,200 and up. This is simply sick.
That is horrible, basically 5080 prices.
As a starting point you take the MSRPs for all the cards you are interested in and you calculate how much of a percentage increase there is when comparing, for example 9070 XT $600 vs 5070 Ti $750, the 5070 Ti is 25% more expensive, if that percentage is also true for the inflated prices (because all prices will be inflated it remains to be seen if by the same %) then you buy what you can afford. That is one possibility. In this case the 9070 XT has better value compared to the 5070 Ti, the same for 9070 vs 5070. Another thing to take into account is how close is the 9070 to the 9070 XT given its MSRP is higher than normal in order to upsell the 9070 XT. If they're quite close the 9070 XT has better value.
Anyway regarding these aftermarket variants, the Shadow and Ventus should be avoided especially at those prices, the Prime is OK as far as the cooling performance but at this level it's ridiculously overpriced.
About the CPU upgrade, only choose the 7800X3D if the difference compared to the 9800X3D is significant. Depending on the country/region they can be pretty close to each other or not.
Definitely GPU first though you might question if now is the time. Availability is shite, prices are high, and there are bound to be SUPERs getting released. Plus, when the stacks are filled up for both Nv and AMD, availability is going to be better.
Wait. You can wait, so wait.
I would vote for waiting as well. If you're okay with that.
If I were to make a prediction, about two years from now would be the maximum waiting period. Why do I say that?
Well I don't see Zen6 launching before Q3 2026, neither Nova Lake, so more than a year from now. But it will still take a few more months for the prices to settle, just as they did (somewhat) for the current generations launched in 2024. So about two years from now you will be able to get a "10800X3D" or if it will be too expensive a 9800X3D cheaper than now.
Regarding GPUs, I'm expecting new generations from both nVidia and AMD no sooner than January 2027. As can be seen this year, it took several months for the prices to start coming down. You will probably be able to get a "6070 Ti" about two years from now, hopefully. Or a "10070 XT".
I said new generations, next year it's possible there will be some refreshes, in my opinion nVidia just needs to have stock available (thus the price hikes will be kept in check) and they will sell, they aren't under pressure to give more stuff for the same price in order to sell, it would be nice if it happened but we shall see.
With AMD it's the same, I don't see the new 2nm(?) GPUs being ready sooner than 2027.
The possible refreshes next year are likely driven by the new 3GB chips, it's a good opportunity for the companies to test them and see how they perform in actual products, also as a way to maintain the appearance of progress, even if most of the cards that will get a VRAM uplift are too weak to take advantage of that buffer, it's still good for marketing, especially regarding non-gaming scenarios/workloads.
Or if you just wait until closer to BF (and closely monitor the prices in this period) there are chances that you can get the whole PC perhaps by the end of the year if you have the money.
Good luck.
