Building a computer? Need advice/suggestions? Come here!

[Warsaw]

I changed a few things:

CPU - Phenom II X4 965 BE

Motherboard - MSI 970A G-46 AM3+

RAM - G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2x 4GB) DDR3 1333, CAS 7.

That's all I changed. The Phenom II's are more reliable and more well-rounded than the FX in every category, and perform just as well. I compensated for the extra cost with that motherboard; it's capable of doing Crossfire in x8/x8 mode if you buy another HD 6870 down the road. The ASRock 970 Extreme4 is also worth looking at, as is the ASRock 990FX Extreme3. I swapped your RAM out because tighter timings are more important on an AMD system; if you're willing to pay $30 more on the RAM, you can get 8GB of DDR3 1600MHz at CAS 7.

As for GPU, I looked at Nvidia's offerings. The GTX 560 is $10-$15 more expensive; there is a slight performance superiority, but I don't know if it's worth it to you.

I would actually suggest going with a Core i3 because it will be all around faster without overclocking, but the CPU is $10 more and the motherboard will be around $40 more for the same features.

[Kalub]

Well, if you had to build a "gaming" desktop that you didn't plan on upgrading for at least 18 months, with ~$600 what would you gents piece together?

[JackalStomper]

My strongest advice at the moment would be to wait. I know its hard sometimes but with kepler, ivy bridge and 2nd gen bulldozer just around the corner it would be best to hang on and see what things look like once they're out. From there you can choose to go with the new tech, or stick with the old (and probably cheaper) stuff.
What's 'future proof' depends entirely on what the next generation of consoles will use. Because chances are most games will be built around those constraints. I doubt it will be anything intense though.

As for $600, if you are willing to reuse old components from your previous build then you can open up more room in your budget for some higher performance. If you don't plan on using your old rig there is no reason you can't reuse the case, HDD's, optical drives, and perhaps even the PSU.

[JackalStomper]

680 finally gets a real benchmark, and its proving superior to the 7970's in every way.
http://wccftech.com/nvidia-kepler-ge...blows-hd-7970/

Still no official word on price though

[Kalub]

Yea, I plan on doing just that, I really just need these components:

mobo
processor
gpu
ram
hdd


I've got a case, power, and optical drive that I plan on reusing. However, how far is the new stuff around the corner? If it saves me some I'm willing to wait it out. It's been a good while since I've upgraded... Also, I'm not sure what's superior, but everyone I know is running a AMDcpu/AMDgpu setup, instead of something else. I don't plan on doing much on it either except playing the games noted above. (WoW, Skyrim, D3) My laptop can handle it, but it gets hot as hell, and even with a 3-fan cooler mat, overheats.

[JackalStomper]

geforce 600 releases are supposedly going to be staggered just as AMD's 7000's were. The earliest release is this month. Ivy bridge in april, 2nd gen bulldozer around july.

Of course '2nd gen' bulldozers lately has been looking more and more like a factory overclock with a higher TDP. Hardly worth waiting for that.

[Cortexian]

Hey, looks like two of those 680's might be a drop-in upgrade that will finally let me play BF3 on Ultra settings triple-monitor'd. Might not need to wait for the 690!

Will have to see how 2x680's perform in PCI-E 2.0 x8 slots.

[JackalStomper]

From benchmarks of various cards that I've seen the performance improvement in any dual gpu configuration between dual x16 and dual x8 is marginal at best.

[Cortexian]

Except the 600 series are going to be PCI-E 3.0 IIRC.

[Zeph]

The difference will still probably only be marginal. It's a 3.0 card, but first generation. You'd likely need three or four to saturate 8x2.0 slots.