All of you have been a big help steering me into a decent system build, I have most of the components either in hand or on the way. The last item that has been the most vexing is the GPU. I open the page up at Newegg and my eyes glaze over, drool starts to run down my mouth and my brain suffers the BSOD.
My system will be a medium-level gamer system and a business computer, to that end the major components are:
i5 2500K SB w/212+
Giga Z68MA-D2H-B3 Mobo
500g HDD, OCZ Agility 3 SSD
G.Skill Sniper 8GB RAM
Corsair TX750 PSU
It will all probably wind up in a CM HAF922 case.
Games... I run MS flight sims, I have MW2 (that I have never played because my Dell can't handle it,) and I would like to move up to stuff like BF3 and whatever else may come our way. No, I don't expect to run Crossfire, SLI or Eyefinity (to be honest, I don't know what they are... and I'm not that demanding of a gamer (yet!)) I don't need everything set on superdoubledeluxemega graphics, but I don't want it to be like playing Pong, either.
I saved some loot with the sales today so my GPU budget is $200-250. I think my PSU is up to handling anything I can stuff into the MoBo, so power really isn't an issue. On one of the other threads someone posted a NV chip roadmap... which helped IMMENSELY with me being able to visualize what the differences in the chipsets are, and I understand 'more is better' in most cases.
Originally I was going to spring for a EVGA GTX550ti, but think it may be better to go up (560ti, etc) or even to a Radeon 6000-series GPU... but I don't know what advantages each has.
Help me out... you have $200-250 to spend on a solid GPU, where would you go with it?
And, as a side note, do you expect GPU prices to come down any after the first of the year? I was reading in a few of the other threads here that the next gen card releases keep getting pushed back or put on infinihold... what will that do to the prices of the existing tech cards?
Thanks, again, everyone!
Edit:
I don't have a new monitor yet, I plan on getting one that will fit the GPU (probably in the 21-23" range) once I get the components and complete the build.
My system will be a medium-level gamer system and a business computer, to that end the major components are:
i5 2500K SB w/212+
Giga Z68MA-D2H-B3 Mobo
500g HDD, OCZ Agility 3 SSD
G.Skill Sniper 8GB RAM
Corsair TX750 PSU
It will all probably wind up in a CM HAF922 case.
Games... I run MS flight sims, I have MW2 (that I have never played because my Dell can't handle it,) and I would like to move up to stuff like BF3 and whatever else may come our way. No, I don't expect to run Crossfire, SLI or Eyefinity (to be honest, I don't know what they are... and I'm not that demanding of a gamer (yet!)) I don't need everything set on superdoubledeluxemega graphics, but I don't want it to be like playing Pong, either.
I saved some loot with the sales today so my GPU budget is $200-250. I think my PSU is up to handling anything I can stuff into the MoBo, so power really isn't an issue. On one of the other threads someone posted a NV chip roadmap... which helped IMMENSELY with me being able to visualize what the differences in the chipsets are, and I understand 'more is better' in most cases.
Originally I was going to spring for a EVGA GTX550ti, but think it may be better to go up (560ti, etc) or even to a Radeon 6000-series GPU... but I don't know what advantages each has.
Help me out... you have $200-250 to spend on a solid GPU, where would you go with it?
And, as a side note, do you expect GPU prices to come down any after the first of the year? I was reading in a few of the other threads here that the next gen card releases keep getting pushed back or put on infinihold... what will that do to the prices of the existing tech cards?
Thanks, again, everyone!
Edit:
I don't have a new monitor yet, I plan on getting one that will fit the GPU (probably in the 21-23" range) once I get the components and complete the build.
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