Planning to build a PC when taxes come.

[Sourdeez]

Not really.

Here is a system I built for my ex roommate for $1300
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-Z77M-D3H-MVP
Cpu: 3570k
Ram: 1333 ddr3 G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB
Gpu: 670 gtx
Ssd: 60gb corsair
HD: 500gb western digital black
Cooler: COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus
Case: Rosewill R101-P-BK
Power: Rosewill 630W single rail


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“Yeah but when does EA come in when your trying for auto erotic asphyxiation and decide that you are really trying to commit suicide? Then they force you to do what they want.”

[truncheon5000]

The difference between 3570 3770 is Hyper Threading which does nothing for most games or anything really except encoding.

Just get cheapest z77 mobo of your choice vendor, every tier above entry level contributes nothing to performance just overpriced features you will never use.

Buy what you need with what money you have, don't buy a system with future upgrades in mind, trust me it often works out more expensive. Just save till you have enough for what you want, in that time there might even be a price drop.
Coolermaster Enforcer http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119240

Gets my number one value rated case suggestion, case is most important decision first up for any new, from scratch build and the quality, smart hdd configuration and air flow per dollar of case makes it hard to ignore even for a more enthusiast level build.

I leave you with 2 more pieces of advice from a heavy duty hardware fanboy, don't disregard AMD, especially if you want to save a buck. And go to Tom's hardware.com forums for info first.

[LawnGnome]

I agree that you shouldn't disregard AMD when it comes to video cards, but gamers should certainly disregard AMD CPUs. Yes they are cheaper, but the performance of their CPUs right now is a bad joke.

[Sourdeez]

I normally would tell him to not disregard amd gpus either for the price but he said he is going to be playing borderlands 2. So he will really benefit from a 670.
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“Yeah but when does EA come in when your trying for auto erotic asphyxiation and decide that you are really trying to commit suicide? Then they force you to do what they want.”

[LawnGnome]

[THEundying27]

I was checking out the AMD cards and some of them are 384 bit. I'm assuming thats good right?

I no absolutely nothing about AMD cards. I've mostly been looking at the NVIDIA. Which AMD card is the equivalent of the GTX 670???

The thing that I desire the most is to be able to play games that are out on xbox right now at 60fps or more if possible like Far Cry 3, AC3, battlefield 3, etc. I'm still trying to learn all the different terminology and what everything means. I see people on different forums use mostly the acronyms for what things are, SLi, CUDA, PCI, SATA and what not.

Sourdeez mentioned that SLi is basically being able to use more than one graphics card if I'm not mistaken.

Anyways long story short, I want something that will last me 3-5 years and still be able to blow console hardware out of the water. I've reached a point where console graphics/framerate piss me off and really messes up my gaming experience. I bought warfighter this year for xbox and even though it got a really bad score, I was really enjoying it. I ended up trading it in because I just couldn't handle the visuals any more. Online would run less than 30fps and it had gnarly texture loading issues oncertain maps. The graphics card and the case will probably be the first things I buy as I start gathering the stuff. I definitely want to take advantage of those free game bundles.
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Yeah I play sports, its called working the remote.

[LawnGnome]

AMD cards generally have better memory bandwidths and VRAM, but the core clock and memory clocks are generally slower. Plus I prefer Nvidia because they have better drivers and more games currently take advantage of them.

The HD 7970 is closest to a GTX 670. It's more expensive but also is a little more powerful. It also uses significantly more power & is noisier. Some people really like them because they're easy to overclock, but I personally don't like to do this. Still, in that price range I would go with the 670. I have one of the 2GB FTW models in my pc and I absolutely love it. It runs very cool, is very quiet, and is extremely power efficient.

[THEundying27]

[LawnGnome]

They are generally slightly more expensive or the same price, but FTW (For The Win) is just the name that EVGA gives some of their overclock editions. The GTX 670 FTW is a major standout because it is practically identical in performance to a vanilla GTX 680 but costs over a a hundred dollars less. If you were going to get a 670 I would get the FTW or maybe consider getting the 4GB "SuperClocked" for like $25 more. It actually clocks slightly slower than the FTW but has double the VRAM.

[THEundying27]

So part of the year is a good time for the best deals?