Also just wanted to add a huge thanks to everyone who's given feedback so far, especially to Quizzical and Ridelynn. Without you guys and this forum, I'd probably be off on some site like cyber power PC building whatever looked or sounded the "coolest" with no regards to price, performance, reviews, etc. So, again, thanks everyone for taking the time to help someone like me who isn't all that extremely tech savvy.

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Originally posted by Zolgar
Is Ivy Bridge worth waiting for? Or would an i5 2500k slightly OC'd offer close to the same performance? Or is it just an unkown until Ivy Bridge is out? I'm willing to wait until the end of April, but I sort of want to decide by then.

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That is a good question.

Clock for clock, Ivy Bridge is about 15% faster. That much we do know from leaked benchmarks at stock clocks. I haven't seen anything "official" about Overclocking though to say if it would be worthwhile to wait.

A Sandy Bridge will typically overclock better than 15% (sometimes higher than 20%). Overclock performance on IB is still somewhat up in the air. Some rumors have said it OC's poorly (possibly due to new tristate transistors), other people have said the new process node lets it OC fairly well.

Originally posted by Ridelynn

 

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Originally posted by Zolgar
Is Ivy Bridge worth waiting for? Or would an i5 2500k slightly OC'd offer close to the same performance? Or is it just an unkown until Ivy Bridge is out? I'm willing to wait until the end of April, but I sort of want to decide by then.

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That is a good question.

Clock for clock, Ivy Bridge is about 15% faster. That much we do know from leaked benchmarks at stock clocks. I haven't seen anything "official" about Overclocking though to say if it would be worthwhile to wait.

A Sandy Bridge will typically overclock better than 15% (sometimes higher than 20%). Overclock performance on IB is still somewhat up in the air. Some rumors have said it OC's poorly (possibly due to new tristate transistors), other people have said the new process node lets it OC fairly well.

~15% seems to me like it may be worth waiting out until the of April to see if it or any more information comes out about IB. 

I'm figuring now, that since the girlfriend needs a new system, and I was planning on replacing the majority of mine anyways, I'd just give her my current one. If I have to build a new one anyways, might as well throw in an extra couple hunred and get me something built around an i5(SB or IB depending) and a 680/7970 and leave the current one as is since it's not all that bad, especially for her considering she's been using a $500-$600 Acer laptop from Staples, and running games at bare minimum settings. 

I couldn't fault anyone deciding to go either way honestly - it's a tough call to make. If you need the computer now, then there is no sense waiting anyway (although ~need~ is a relative term with a gaming computer I guess). That being said, I know I always hate to buy something just to see the next model come out in like 1 week - just psychologically.

You can read about Ivy Bridge for yourself if you like:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5626/ivy-bridge-preview-core-i7-3770k

I'd say the improvement looks more like 10% than 15%, and if anything, less than 10% rather than more.  And some of the improvement that is there is from the higher clock speed.  That pretty much matches Intel's official claims of 4%-6% gains in IPC, and then bumping the clock speed by about 3%.   Note that the proper comparison is of the 3770K to the 2600K, not the 2500K.

I'm expecting somewhat less overclockability for Ivy Bridge, just because it's the very first chip on a brand new process node--and Intel had to delay the chips in the first place because they were having trouble with the process node.  It might just mean greater variability in overclocking, with some chips able to hit 5 GHz and others unable to reach 4.5 GHz on air at any voltage.  Remember that Sandy Bridge is on a very mature process node that has had chips commercially available for well over two years now, so yields there are surely very good by now.

Once Ivy Bridge is out, you'd rather have it than Sandy Bridge, of course.  I'm expecting it to be a huge deal for laptops (where the reduced power consumption from the die shrink is a big deal), but a lot less so for desktops.

Originally posted by Ridelynn

I couldn't fault anyone deciding to go either way honestly - it's a tough call to make. If you need the computer now, then there is no sense waiting anyway (although ~need~ is a relative term with a gaming computer I guess). That being said, I know I always hate to buy something just to see the next model come out in like 1 week - just psychologically.

I'm personally willing to wait, but she's got a $500 paperweight that happens to let you type on it now. And yeah, I'd be a bit upset if I bought the SB i5 and the IB came out a week or so later. But building one system from scratch is cheaper than building two, and she needs something pretty soon. So I think I'm just going to go with the i5 2500k and OC it a little, and give her my current system. 

Here's what I'm thinking:

COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Advanced RC-932-KKN5-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case

GIGABYTE GA-P67X-UD3-B3 LGA 1155 Intel P67

CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX650 V2 650W (I have 2 of these and have both been great, but if there's something better for the same price or less I'm all for it)

Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz + CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600

Mushkin Enhanced Chronos MKNSSDCR120GB 2.5" 120GB SSD

COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus

LG 22X Super-Multi DVD Burner

GTX 680 (or 7970 if I can't find one in stock in ~a week or so. The $50 higher price makes me a little meh, but I do like the sound of Powertune more than GPU boost)

Windows 7 ~$100 (if she can't get me a copy from her school for cheaper)

I'm good to go with mouse, keyboard, speakers, and monitor.

I just want to make sure everything there is compatable and has a good quality to price ratio. Some of this stuff is from what I've seen Quizzical link to others, so I figured they'd be okay to use.

Well when you say "nice price ratio"

The 7970/680 are both fast cards. Very fast. If you only have a single "typical" sized monitor (1920x1080 is the most common), then these cards are total overkill. And likely will be for the next 3-4 years.

If you look at them in terms of money per performance right now, they look pretty poor at these typical resolutions, because they can't really give you anything more than a video card that costs half as much can give you (anything over 60Hz is pretty much a moot point, and a $200-250 video card can give you that with pretty well nearly every single option on in today's video games at 1080p).

They do look a bit better if you look forward: they will continue to perform well on future titles. Heck, a 8800 GTX still can play most titles at 1080p, and it's about 6 years old now. That card was $549 retail when it first shipped on Dec 2006. Something like an 8600 from the same era, stands no real chance at performing very well on most titles today.

So you can think of that price as "futureproofing", or you can think of it as unnecessary and cut back to something a bit more "bang for the buck" today.

Personally, I tend to cut back just a bit, because I like to upgrade my hardware a bit more frequently. Other people just like to get it working and never touch it again until it either dies or it's just become so obsolete it can't limp anymore, so there are good cases for going either way.

I just mention it because the 480/5870's (from 2 generations ago) can still pretty well play every game nearly maxed in 1080p, and here we are 2 generations later, there is the possibility to save a good bit of cash if you are just using one typical monitor. But in the same vein, when the 480 was out, the 460 was the "bang for the buck" card - it's still a decent card, but some of the newer titles will start to stress it. Buying a 480 then would be ~$500. Buying a 460 then was about $200-$250, and upgrading it now to get back to what is roughly the same visual quality would be if you had bought the 480 in the first place is about $200-$250 again, but you'll get PCI3.0 and DX11.1 and a lot lower power consumption...

So I can see going either way.

Originally posted by Ridelynn

Well when you say "nice price ratio"

The 7970/680 are both fast cards. Very fast. If you only have a single "typical" sized monitor (1920x1080 is the most common), then these cards are total overkill. And likely will be for the next 3-4 years.

If you look at them in terms of money per performance right now, they look pretty poor at these typical resolutions, because they can't really give you anything more than a video card that costs half as much can give you (anything over 60Hz is pretty much a moot point, and a $200-250 video card can give you that with pretty well nearly every single option on in today's video games at 1080p).

They do look a bit better if you look forward: they will continue to perform well on future titles. Heck, a 8800 GTX still can play most titles at 1080p, and it's about 6 years old now. That card was $549 retail when it first shipped on Dec 2006. Something like an 8600 from the same era, stands no real chance at performing very well on most titles today.

So you can think of that price as "futureproofing", or you can think of it as unnecessary and cut back to something a bit more "bang for the buck" today.

Personally, I tend to cut back just a bit, because I like to upgrade my hardware a bit more frequently. Other people just like to get it working and never touch it again until it either dies or it's just become so obsolete it can't limp anymore, so there are good cases for going either way.

I just mention it because the 480/5870's (from 2 generations ago) can still pretty well play every game nearly maxed in 1080p, and here we are 2 generations later, there is the possibility to save a good bit of cash if you are just using one typical monitor. But in the same vein, when the 480 was out, the 460 was the "bang for the buck" card - it's still a decent card, but some of the newer titles will start to stress it. Buying a 480 then would be ~$500. Buying a 460 then was about $200-$250, and upgrading it now to get back to what is roughly the same visual quality would be if you had bought the 480 in the first place is about $200-$250 again, but you'll get PCI3.0 and DX11.1 and a lot lower power consumption...

So I can see going either way.

"Futureproofing" is what I'm attempting to aim for. When I get this all figured out and put together, I'll be wanting it to last me a good while and not have to bother with it until I start having problems running games on at least high settings at a comfortable FPS (which I'm hoping is a good couple of years) or I want to play in extremely high resolutions (eyefinity or whatever).  I'm sure it's an awesome experience (eyefinity), and maybe I'll try it out one day just for fun with just the one card, but I'm quite content with one monitor for gaming and one for having a browser open, movie runnig, etc.

Also, I have money RIGHT NOW. My thinking is, since life is starting to pick up and get serious, I may not have all this extra cash in another year or so (if I get married, if I end up with kids, insurances, bills that keep appearing in my mailbox, etc). So if I can get something that will last a long while now, upgrading won't be something I have to worry about for a while, and maybe I can just put back a few bucks here and there, so when the time to upgrade does come, I'll be all set.

Oh since you mentioned Windows License:

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/en_US/cat/categoryID.37826100

Windows 7 Professional Upgrade - digital download
Academic discount - $65
(requires a valid .edu email address)

That's about the cheapest ~legal~ option I've seen. It does require that you have another copy of Windows product on hand (basically any version of XP or Vista installation DVD). If you want the official DVD it's another $15 for them to mail it to you, and it takes about 3-6 weeks (although all you really need are the install files and your CD Key, as the install DVDs are all the same).

The next best bet is Windows 7 Home Premium OEM edition, which is available through Newegg or many other retailers, and is right at $100.

There is also, right now, the option to run Windows 8 Preview, for Free. That only works until Windows 8 goes live (this fall), then you will have to buy an OS, and it's still "Beta" level software, so you may encounter bugs and other incompatibilities, but it's a viable option right now.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/consumer-preview