Upgrade gpu or buy new pc?

MY current specs:

GTX 780 gpu, i5 3750k @3,4gHz cpu, 730W psu, 16gb ddr3 ram, some midrange mobo(dont remember the brand or model), 128gb ssd + 2tb hdd...The monitor is Acer Predator 1080p 144hz which will not be replaced anytime soon.

The obvious point of upgrading is for gaming since my current gpu is showing its age (I can't anylonger max modern games and retain a stable fps...latest proof is Doom & Tomb Raider). The goal is to be able to play upcoming games such as No man's sky, Deus Ex and Battlefield 1 in 1080p resolution with high fps, and perhaps get one of the VR HMD come winter.

I was initially planning on replacing my gpu with a Evega gtx 1080 but I'm worried about my cpu bottlenecking. If I need to upgrade the cpu I might aswell buy a new PC (since I'll have to buy a new mobo and ram aswell).

I need some advice from you guys. The money is alwyas a issue so I'd prefer to just upgrade the gpu but if its the suboptimal route I might get a new PC alltogether and put on hold other luxuries such as VR and whatnot.

Well you obviously gain some from a new cpu, but gpu is a better upgrade vs $. You'd need a whole new motherboard+ram+cpu which stacks up in price.

Keep in mind that dx12 and Vulkan both aim to reduce the cpu overhead which means the cpu power required in the upcoming days shouldn't be that high.

1080 would be an overkill for 1080p btw, 1070 would make more sense, tho you can obviously DSR higher resolutions...

@howmakewood: Oh thnx for the info about Vulkan and Dx12, didn't know that. Well gtx1080 might be somewhat overkill for 1080p but as you mentioned DSR will be utilised, in some cases I might play the games on my UHD tv (those rare moments when I want to play a game where input lag is not a big concern) and eventually buy Occulus Rift/ HTC Vive (whenever the purchase is justified by some killer app).

Gtx 1070 or gtx 1080 will be fine. Your cpu is still good.

Buy the GPU now for sure. You can always put it into any future builds anyway. Your CPU will not bottleneck in the majority of games if u give it a good OC.

You tried overclocking your CPU?

buy a new gpu 1070 or 1080 or wait for amd's polaris

Upgrade GPU to 1070 or 1080, CPU is great.

+1 to all people suggesting to upgrade your GPU.

Your CPU is even now a top dog for gaming and I doubt there is even one game that can be bottleneck from 3570K. And if you find one, then by 99% the game will be bottlenecked by current gen best i5 the 6600K.

In other words, there is no reason to upgrade your CPU if you have top sandybridge i5 (yours is one architecture later, the Ivybridge) or later architecture i5.

I'm on a 3570K, 970 and 16GB DDR3. SSD+HDD, I will be upgrading to a Polaris GPU or the 1070. That's going to be my last upgrade for this rig.

I will build a new one in 2017 with Vega + Zen, provided they don't suck, and I'm going to upgrade my monitor as well to some 1440p 144Hz or 4K with high refresh rate if they're available and affordable at the time.

Vega + Zen are they new CPU in 2017?. If they are I will wait my self and run this to ground.

I am still using a 2500k and I don't plan on upgrading it any time soon. I'm going to be buying an MSI 1070 in the next couple months as long as they don't have any build quality issues. Anything over Ivy/Sandy Bridge is not going to be CPU limiting even with the 1070/1080 cards.

Your CPU is fine. There's no point in upgrading to newer i5s unless you want to lower power consumption. The clocks of newer i5s are about the same as your current CPU. A new video card, however, will have a huge impact and should be done right away.

i'm maxing out tomb raider and DOOM at 1440p (75+ FPS) on a core i5-3450 so your CPU is definitely fine.

GPU upgrade is the way to go. i'd say get a 1080 or 1070

Video card man! Im using the same cpu at stock clocks and with my 970 im getting smooth 60fps on gta v doom and tomb raider. But im gonna be going for the new amd gpus thats launching this month 8gb model of course to get away from the 3.5gb bug. so go for either AMD or Nvidia's new gpus. :)

GPU would be fine, CPU will eventually bottleneck dependent on games, but I am still rocking my 2500k @ 4ghz.

Update: I bought MSI gtx 1080 founders edition yesterday and I'm really satisfied with the upgrade. I did some benchmarking and got the following results.

Fallout 4 highest settings @1080p: I got 20-30 fps with my old card. With my new card I get solid 60fps (for some reason there is a fps cap in this game) with some graphics mods installed.

Overwatch highest settings 100% render scale @1080p: went from 60 to almost 200fps...bumped resolution scale to 200% and still have above 90 fps.

Batman Arkham Knight: I bought this game yesterday since I knew my old system wasn't able to handle it. Runs flawlessly with highest settings @1440p dsr.

Overall I'm really impressed with this gpu and can't wait to replay Witcher 3 with highest settings once I'm done with Batman and Rise of Tomb Raider.