i think crysis/tomb raider/bioshock are added on top of the sleepin dogs/far cry 3/assassin's creed 3 (so total of 6 games) if you buy 79XX cards...hence only those 2 for the 7870 LE card

Is it worth an upgrade over a 6970?


maybe 2 of them? that's a pretty good price

I'm waiting for NCIX to have another warehouse sale lol, that's when the graphics cards are ridiculously cheap. I can manage to get by with my 6770 for a bit longer.

Looking to pick up a 7850 when the time comes, or a 7870 if cheap enough.

On an unrelated note, my computer can no longer restart properly, as in, it restarts but doesn't boot and doesn't even send a display signal to my monitor. It's not really an issue, but more of a nuisance when I have to reboot the computer after installing something that requires an install. Any ideas?

^ odd...perhaps reset CMOS?

if you can comfortably play your games at the setting you like then i'd say nah...6970 still a good card

2 of them obvs would be a nice upgrade

so there's new graphic cards coming out soon ??
Which of these new cards would be a good upgrade from my 660ti then ?
Something that's at least 2x faster

I got a 660TI also... I thought that was a really good card? Would I need to upgrade soon?

my Radeon HD5770 is still good.. plays BF3 on lowest settings!! :troll:

No new series of amd cards this year. nvidia im not too sure.

But to answer your question, you can pop in another 660ti and sli it. its not going to guarantee 2x more performance but its a cheaper solution than a ares II and gtx690 (You will prob get like a 80% boost on average for games). Nothing is really (single chip), 2x faster than a 660 ti. You have a solid card bro.

it is a really good card. you wont have to upgrade for a while depending on what your playing. 660 ti is going to be good for a few years as long as your not going to play like crysis 3 4 5 6 at godlike graphics lol. Really depends on what your going to do with it though. Main stream games like BattleField and like Dota/ starcraft, the graphic card will last you a while. I would say it takes 3-5 years to out date a computer if you build it properly. Dun worry, you have a really nice graphics card n_n

The new graphics card you're talking about is Nvidia's Titan coming next Monday. It is expected to be faster than the fastest SLI setup right now, but will cost around $1000.

What do you guys think of ASRock Motherboards?

I'm trying to decide which mobo to go with for the i7 3770k.

It's either the Gigabyte UD5H or MSI Z77 Mpower or the ASRock Extreme6. Or should I just get a $100-$140 board?

I would pick ASRock over MSI any day of the week. My experience with ASRock has also been slightly better than Gigabyte.

What do you guys think of this?
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 ATX Intel Motherboard - Newegg.com

It looks like the only difference between the Extreme4 and Extreme6 is the extra ports... you get free RAM with the Extreme4 too lol.

ASRock used to be a budget division of ASUS in the past I believe. Not sure what it is now since I've been out of the business for awhile. Originally their boards were utter crap as we had so many RMAs for them. This was almost 10 years ago though so I would hope they've improved a lot seeing as they're #3 for mobo distribution must speak for something.

when you buy mobo just look/decide if you are gonna overclock (quality/quantity of power phases) and what features you want (esata...# of USB 3/sata6gbps ports...debug LED). Some also look at the BIOS tweakability.

I'd say reliability of mobo is probaby pretty even among gigabyte msi asus....asrock is comparable these days. Just look up common bugs/problems of the boards you are narrowing down and see if they've been resolved with the latest bios

from there just pick whatever is cheapest

it's one of those components you dont wanna cheap out as they typical have better shelf life than video cards...yet if it has a bunch of features you'll never use then just get a $120 board.

Well, I only have experience with AMD boards, but i'm sure this will apply. You want to make sure you have enough phases of VRM, good VRM cooling if you are overclocking.

I'd recommend Gigabyte over ASRock, who have been known to lie/use trickery on their VRM design.
Having "enough phases" isn't enough, for the aforementioned reason. It's easy to inflate the number.

I've had extremely limited experiences here, but I freaking hate my Gigabyte mobo, and love the ASRock I picked up for le gf's rig.

i tend to stick with asus motherboard as they never gave me any problems in the past unlike gigabyte which went bad on me within a year. Maybe its just my luck.

My past MBs have been Gigabyte... my old P4, My C2D and my i5... nothing but great stuff... I have tried an Asus long time ago (P4), died within 2 months...

For me, this generation has been:

Intel boards: Gigabyte
AMD boards: Asus or MSI

I've made up my mind and I am going with the UD5H This is my almost finalized build, what do you guys think?

i7 3770k + CoolerMaster 212 Evo
Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H
Corsair Vengeance Blue 8GB 2X4GB
Coolermaster 7870 PCS+ Tahiti LE
Intel 330 240GB SSD
2TB 7200RPM Western Digital HDD
Blackmagic Intesity Pro
Fractal R4 w/ Window
??? PSU (Still need to choose one)

Will mostly be playing games on this, streaming/recording console gameplay, video and photo editing.

I think you meant Powercolor?
Pretty solid build I would say.
I've been using my Gigabyte board for my 2500K for 2 years or so? No problems here.
I don't think RAM matters too much so get whatever is currently on sale/cheapest. Not sure if prices of RAM has gone up but maybe make it 16GB for another $40 or so if you are doing heavy recording/editing.
PSU I'd say get at least 650W. Something more quality since it's one of those components that can last you several builds.
Corsair or PSU made by Seasonic.


So, who can tell me if it's worth it for me to upgrade from my MSI 560 Ti to the Powercolor 7870 PCS+ Tahiti LE?
I still have it in my cart with the sales price and have been going back an forth on whether to buy or not.

+1 increase the RAM as its super cheap now a days 16gb should be the norm now

I wish Intel had sent out their 330 series for review... Because the 335 actually isn't that great for a SandForce drive:

http://www.hardcoreware.net/wordpres...urve-iops1.png

http://www.hardcoreware.net/wordpres...x-response.png

It's the slowest SandForce drive I've tested

IMO the best SandForce drive is either the Kingston HyperX 3K, Intel 520, or OCZ Vertex 3, whichever is cheapest

Best drive I have tested overall is the OCZ Vector. I expect to be testing the Samsung 840 series soon. But my hopes aren't high based on what I have seen on few tests I have seen that dig deeper than standard fresh state IOPS performance.,

I would say 16GB of ram would more suffice for your setup...
For PSU, I like the modular ones.... makes it cleaner looking inside the case...