I recommend a 5800X if you aren't planning for a "final form" upgrade. The reason being, that next-generation consoles use 8-core CPUs that are much closer to desktop specs. Odds are that a 5600X would struggle for some console ports, because they are designed with six cores in mind for games. The 5600X is a 6-core processor, leaving no spare cores for OS stuff.

I'll be honest, I'm a little lost at this point; the last time I was still tracking hardware actively, was back in the Diamond Stealth/AMD K5 days.

So what are my options if my system has a Socket 1155 / Socket H2 / Socket LGA1155 currently holding a i5-3570?

Right now, you're looking at replacing everything, but AMD is releasing new information soon, so that would be between Intel 10xxx series and AMD Ryzen 5xxx, with current sockets and DDR4 memory.

What's quite clear to me is that there will be a 5700X, which should be 8C/16T/65W TDP, like so. Makes little sense otherwise. I mean, previous generation went up to 8C/16T/3.6 GHz base speed for 65W TDP, this one only up to 6C/12T/3.7 GHz? Can't be. And it's not like the spot isn't left open in the lineup, with the next one being the 5800X.

I'll wait for the ryzen 5000 laptop iterations to arrive. Hopefully, big navi is competitive and one can expect skus to be reasonably priced, going ahead. I realize that ryzen 5000 is going to be a tad expensive.

You can buy a NOS/used i7-3770 (4c/8t) for a little more performance than your i5 (4c/4t). There are two versions the "k" and the not "k", the diference is the "k" version has a small boost in clocks, unlocked multiplier (for overclock with support on Z*** motherboards) and better support for virtualization. The "S" and "T" versions are low power parts usually found in mini pc's, stay away from them.

Otherwise, you have to replacing every part except the case and maybe the storage (would recomend changing the PSU as well). Depending on what you use the pc for, new platform is a noticeable jump in performance, from game performance to software start speed and browsing, everything will be faster and nimble.

I was interested in Big Navi but after the headaches I've had with my 5700 XT, if I replace it next year, it'll probably be with a 3060 ti or a 3070. I want to support AMD, but their graphics cards are too inconsistent and the drivers are just too bad. The $100 I saved buying this card, I've spent on time troubleshooting programs to work correctly and optimizing my system.

Still on the fence with the 5000 series though. No commitment from me on that yet.

Yeah AMD drivers are what makes me stick with nVidia. I actually hate going with the "big" company, I like supporting the smaller guy, but their drivers and options just aren't as good. Also so far DLSS is pretty much mandatory with ray tracing, so big navi without that is kind of meh. I don't even like DLSS, it's just factually true that games like Control can't run at native res with ray tracing unless you're using a 2080ti at 1080p or something insane like that.

I'd really like to see an XMG Apex laptop with one of the 5000 series top runners in it for that sweet sweet cache.
I mean the whole unified cache has me wondering how big a role it'll play and apparantly the 4000 laptop chips dip out under sustained load and frankly i think it's the low cache that doesn't hold enough instruction data ready for the cpu to utilize that's the likely culprit.
Don't get me wrong blazing fast in thin and light is nice, but it clearly has some issues going on.
As to others mention AMD drivers suck and they need to fix that in the GPU race; they probably haven't really focused much company priority to that having been so far behind intel technologically for so long.
I mean so long as people still keep buying their GPU's at all due to price point they probably haven't needed to so far, but i think consumer opinion has slowly snowballed and they risk 'having' to put in same scope improvements to win back customers even after they get on top of driver issues.

Which brand is your 5700XT? I wonder if that's a universal problem or just bad implementation by one specific company.. (Yes I read about overheating problems when they were released, but naturally I'd assume any good manufacturer worth anything is going to use better cooling than the reference implementation, and/or release a driver that runs the card stable by default)

I understand why ppl would blame it on your PSU. Normally when GPUs are on the verge of overheating, they'd just throttle hard. Shutting off the PC is a dumb way to handle it.

EDIT: Lol https://www.pcgamesn.com/asus/rog-strix-amd-rx-5700-overheating-fix

I guess the rush to market is so hectic these days that they don't even test their shit.

ASUS notoriously doesn't give a shit about AMD, and the XFX THICC was garbage-tier. Also, let's be honest about these companies not always getting a long time to finish a design, test it, produce it and ship it for the launch window. The recent NVIDIA situation is a good example of that.

Did you check if there is a new firmware for it?

It's an XFX RAW II.
Not recently, but I think I will do so now. :)

EDIT: There was a BIOS update that reduces the factory overclock and increases stability.

The 5700 XT when factory oc'd is basically pushed to its breaking point straight out of the factory. I read a few articles about it. Will have to test the card out and see how it handles, but setting up the fan ramp actually increased my fps in most games because it doesn't thermally throttle as quickly.

The thermal throttling there's really no excuse for. Which is probably why I'm going to skip Big Navi. AMD's gpus have historically run a lot hotter than Nvidia's.

So it appears the RAW II comes from the factory with the "High Performance" Bios which is the one that causes the overheating and I suspect my pc rebooting itself.

I just installed the "Normal" bios and my FPS went UP in Outer Worlds but down in Horizon: Zero Dawn by approximately 2. in TOW it went up by almost 40.

I'm interested to see how it handles CONTROL. Previously, it handled it mostly fine, but if I set the textures to max, it caused my pc to reboot.

By the way, I should note the only games that have caused a full blown pc restart are The Witcher 3 and CONTROL, both while using Galaxy.

In all other cases, it's a matter of the games under performing if I max the graphics even though the card is rated to max them, unless I do one of the two things I"ve mentioned to fix it.

I would also say that setting the bios on the gpu to "Normal" has severely lowered the fan output on my custom fan curve.

And this whole situation is the reason when I upgrade, I'm probably going back to Nvidia. I do enjoy tinkering, but not with hardware. I want hardware to *just work*.