Hi, looking to update my gaming PC from a half decent AMD X4 Phenom, 4GB RAM, RadeonR7 GPU to something that can handle a few more pretty graphics and a few more more cars (more than two!). Current build is almost 9 years old and as above rung BeamNG reasonably ok as long as there too much on the screen. Will future Budget is around £400max for new CPU, MB, 16GB RAM. Reusing existing case, PSU, SSD/HDD and GPU if I can. Not built a PC since this current one so a little out of touch for gaming specs (IT manager by day but only deal with business laptops). Thinking of a AMD Ryzen but not sure which type mabe 1600 or 2400 (are they worlds apart?) Any help deciding appreciated.
Ryzen 5 1600 and Ryzen 5 2400G is both different CPUs, one is a 1st gen 6-core 12-thread with no graphics, and the other one is a 2nd gen 4-core 8-thread with integrated graphics. You may want to check out the Intel Core i5-8400/8600K if you don't mind switching brands, as they also have decent performance, but I still recommend Ryzen myself. I'll get the R5 1600, it has more processing power than the R5 2400G. But honestly, you should dial down the RAM to 8GB, as 16GB RAM is still overkill these days. Also, your R7 GPU is a too weak for the new system, so I rather put money for a new GPU than more RAM, if I want to improve game performance.
To add to this, the amount of multitasking you do will also affect how much RAM you should have. Having more RAM than needed allows Windows to use the idle RAM as cache for frequently accessed data, which can speed up load times for the most frequently opened applications.
Your R7 card bottlenecks your X4 which can be said even more with a Ryzen 5 and what PSU do you have?