2 minutes ago, bofhlusr said:

If you do get the RTX 3060 get the 3060ti instead. I have it because it was the only RTX small and short enough to fit in my micro-ATX case. Just be aware that it's noisy when playing graphic extensive games such as MSFS. It's quiet on work stuff though. I don't know why you're quoting $500 when you can buy the same thing for much much less than that in Amazon and even cheaper on eBay (not so risky since it's cheap).

In your system (again, the same as what I have), upgrading the CPU means you'll have to also have to upgrade the motherboard and that's just to start with...

I know! Motherboard, memory, CPU and GPU!!!!!

8 minutes ago, rolly said:

I know! Motherboard, memory, CPU and GPU!!!!!

The good thing about going with the 4000 series GPU is that it will take your CPU bottleneck performance and multiply it by 1.5x to 2.0x depending on a few things. 

If you're currently able to get 30 FPS in a scenario now, you will be looking at around 45-60 FPS with Frame Generation on. 

It might sound weird, but if you're in a very complex scenery, advanced weather, your new GPU "baseline performance" let's say, would be able to lift your performance significantly, all the way up until your CPU runs out of breath and is holding you back. That's when the "Frame Generation" lifts your performance even higher, because it starts inserting frames in between the "baseline" frames.

It's difficult to explain, but a GPU upgrade to a 4070 would give you a far better experience even if your CPU is old and slow. 

I used to have an 8700K, although I got mine in December 2017 and not 2019 like you did.  At the time I bought a 1080ti also.

A couple of years later I upgraded just the gpu to a 3080ti, and I would not do that again.  Yes I could run at 4K better, but, I was still hamstrung by the then-old cpu.

That said, as was said a 4070ti Super (with 16 GB vram) would be the card to get if you can swing it.  My only concern would be that the 8700K would have trouble keeping up and you would have issues with Frame Gen.  Otherwise, if that's a non-issue, 4070ti Super if you can do it.

I think you can do a lot better for a lot less than spending $5,000 or $7,000.  I built my current rig for far less than that, and I have a 4090 (which was $1,650 at the time!  And later they went UP in price!) and a 7800X3D which was only about $350.   The entire rig cost me about $2,800 although I did re-use my monitor, but that's still a lot less than $5,000.

I have an i7-9700K which I run at 5 GHz with water cooling.  I also have a 3060Ti (8Gb) driving a 48" 4k monitor (120 Hz) and 32GB memory. 

Using DLSS/Frame Gen / Balanced I can see 60 FPS (locked by RTSS) in almost all places except custom airports with a lot of traffic.

I flew out of KFHR (Friday Harbor - a "bespoke" Asobo airport) with Navigraph charts, FS Realistic, real weather and never saw less than 60 FPS flying for an hour around the north part of Puget Sound. 

My CPU stays at about 60% total over all 8-cpus with two staying above 90% most of the time.  The GPU stays at 95%+ most of the time.  Dev Mode FPS tells me I am GPU limited except occasionally CPU limited near airports, high def scenery, or with a lot of AI traffic. 

Most comparison web sites show an i7-9700K to be about 15% faster than an i7-8700 but I've also overclocked it a bit.

I believe a new video card would be helpful especially at that res...even with your older 8700K.

Something along the lines of a 4070 Ti

31 minutes ago, TacomaSailor said:

I have an i7-9700K which I run at 5 GHz with water cooling.  I also have a 3060Ti (8Gb) driving a 48" 4k monitor (120 Hz) and 32GB memory. 

Using DLSS/Frame Gen / Balanced I can see 60 FPS (locked by RTSS) in almost all places except custom airports with a lot of traffic.

I flew out of KFHR (Friday Harbor - a "bespoke" Asobo airport) with Navigraph charts, FS Realistic, real weather and never saw less than 60 FPS flying for an hour around the north part of Puget Sound. 

My CPU stays at about 60% total over all 8-cpus with two staying above 90% most of the time.  The GPU stays at 95%+ most of the time.  Dev Mode FPS tells me I am GPU limited except occasionally CPU limited near airports, high def scenery, or with a lot of AI traffic. 

Most comparison web sites show an i7-9700K to be about 15% faster than an i7-8700 but I've also overclocked it a bit.

I got the 8700k clock at 4.8 Mhz.  I think after everything mention above, I'll try the RTX 4070 super or ti first and see how it goes.

The best thing about amazon, is you have 30 days no question ask for returns!!

I know my system is old, but that CPU and GPU was great. My FPS used to be better years ago. I think the newest driver as my GPU is so old don't work as good for this GTX 1080 Ti.