everything else aside, if these were your only two options, whicyh would you do? Please keep in mind that I am very much looking forward to GW2's launch, and play mmo's for the most part. I do play some Borderlands 1 and Minecraft, etc... nothing like BF3 or anything though.

My current system is a dinosaur. Built it a long time ago and it's time to move onward and give this one to my 6 year old son for mild gaming (Wizard 101 and Minecraft).

Current rig:

Athlon 64 X2 - 4200+, 550ti (6870 died on me), 4gb DDR2 800.

Now the two options I am between. PSU, win7HP 64, and HDD aside, as I have those covered.

I can either build a Phenom X4 965 black with 8gb ram and a 6870 right now, or I can build an i5 3570k with 8gb ram and keep my 550ti for another 3 weeks and then get a 6870 or 7850 depending on funds at that time.

I think the i5 Ivy will last me longer and surely outperform, but I'm not a die hard 50 FPS+ gamer here, I am fine with 20 - 25FPS in mmo's. Anything more is just gravy to me.

Will my 550ti (if I get the i5 and use this card for the next month) be so much of a bottleneck that I wont see much difference between what I currently have? Or wil I still see a boost just due to the CPU change?

I know the 550ti is garbage... and I will not be keeping it either way, it's just one way I replace it now with a weaker cpu and the other I replace it in a month with a better cpu.

I've been out of the loop for a few years so I thank you all in advance for any light you can shed.

Thanks!

edit - I'll also have a hyper 212 on either cpu.

Also, the i5 build will cost justa  bit more than the AMD build due to the fact that i have a microcenter within 40 miles of me and they have a sweet deal on the ivy bridge and z77 mobo combo for 200 bucks. But it's just enough more to push the vid card out of reach for another month.

Ignoring the price difference, a Core i5-3570K is a lot faster than a Phenom II X4 965.  As in, maybe 40% faster.  So that's clearly the better buy.

But ignoring the price difference gives away the game.  The price difference between the two processors alone is $120, and then you can probably throw on another $20 or so in price difference between the motherboards.  The usual choice is that you get a Core i5-3570K if it fits your budget or something cheaper from AMD (such as the Phenom II X4 965) if it doesn't.

I'm skeptical that Micro Center would throw in a $230 processor plus a motherboard in a combo deal for $200 total.  I realize that Micro Center is cheaper on processors, but their site says $190 for the processor alone.  I think their business model is to pass along processors at cost to try to get you to come in the store and buy other stuff.  If it's a $200 combo deal, then I suspect that neither the processor nor the motherboard are what you'd want.

Can you give details on the exact parts in the combo?

How is a 550 ti garbage?  I'm using one right now and I get 50-60 FPS, max settings on any game. But like Quizz said, the i5 is going to be so much better.

A GeForce GTX 550 Ti is not garbage, unless you're the sort of person who insists on maxing settings in everything to see if you can make your computer choke.  The reasons why I almost invariably advised against buying one are:

1)  It nearly always costs about $10-$20 more than the AMD equivalent, which was originally the Radeon HD 5770/6770, though now the Radeon HD 7750 gives roughly equivalent performance while Nvidia doesn't have a replacement for the GeForce GTX 550 Ti yet.

2)  It uses substantially more power than the AMD equivalent, at roughly 20% more power for comparable performance as compared to the Radeon HD 5770/6770.

3)  The mismatched memory channels will harm memory bandwidth in some cases.  I'm guessing that it will be fine up to 768 MB, but then you lose performance above that, rather than being able to put the full 1 GB to proper use the way that pretty much any other video card ever made would.  Most of the time, this won't matter, but it will mean you get less performance than you'd otherwise expect precisely when you need more performance the most.

Problems (2) and (3) would be easily overlooked if not for (1).  If it were $10 cheaper than the AMD equivalent, I'd have recommended it often.

But the Radeon HD 5770/6770, like the Radeon HD 7750, is not garbage either.  The Radeon HD 5770 was mid-range in its day, and now the 7750 is lower mid-range, but they're very much gaming cards and not low end "don't try to play games on this" cards like a Radeon HD 6450 or GeForce GT 520/610.

Today, a GeForce GTX 550 Ti means you'll have to turn some graphical settings down a ways in relatively demanding games, though you'll be able to max settings in games that aren't so demanding.  Even when you have to turn settings down, you'll still be able to run the game at fairly high settings.  There are very few games out there where a GeForce GTX 550 Ti wouldn't be able to get you 60 frames per second at moderate settings.

Also, if you already have a GeForce GTX 550 Ti, I wouldn't recommend buying a Radeon HD 6870.  Yes, the 6870 would be an upgrade, but I generally recommend that you at least double the performance of your old card in order to justify an upgrade, and a 6870 won't do that.

This is a matter of opinion, really.  To take a more extreme case, buying a card that is 10% faster than your previous one once every several months would be a massive waste of money.  You want fewer but larger upgrades than that.  A Radeon HD 6870 is maybe 70% faster than a GeForce GTX 550 Ti, but keep the GTX 550 Ti until you can afford at least a Radeon HD 7850, or better yet, a 7870.

Actually, I'd keep the GTX 550 Ti until you run into some game where it just isn't good enough.  That might happen immediately, or it might take a while.  An Athlon 64 X2 4200+ will already restrict your performance in more than a few games, and when you get the new processor, you might be pleasantly surprised to see that what you thought was a video card problem was really a processor bottleneck--and a processor bottleneck that you just fixed.

Thanks guys. You helped me make up my mind.

I never had a problem with the 550ti, aside from the fact that it replaced a 6870 which died on me, and I saw a slight performance decrease. I imagine both cards are bottlenecked by this x2 4200 though.

But then when I hit a few tech forums this week to ask advice and get brought up tp date on current tech, the 550ti got ripped apart by a lot of people. My original plan was to buidl the i5 system now and then get a 7850 in a few weeks. But so many people started saying that putting th 550ti in an i5 system, even if just for a few weeks, is a very bad move, "that card will cripple that proc!" etc... and they started suggesting that I get the 965 and a 6870 instead.

That's when I decided to ask here.

I dont get to upgrade very often (obviously) so when I do I like to do the best that I absolutely can for the money that I have.... and even go a little over budget and deal with the wife aggro later. The i5 mad ethe most sense to me as far as lasting the longest, but having to keep the 550 for a while sacred me after reading all the things folks were saying earlier this week.

So thanks again for the advice! I'll build the i5 and keep the 550ti for now & I'll pick up the 7850 or7870 in a month or so.

You made the right choice.  Dealing with a lower mid range GPU for a month or so is a WAY more intelligent decision than  initially building an overall subpar system, comparatively speaking, simply so you don't have to wait such a short period of time.

Originally posted by miguksaram

You made the right choice.  Dealing with a lower mid range GPU for a month or so is a WAY more intelligent decision than  initially building an overall subpar system, comparatively speaking, simply so you don't have to wait such a short period of time.

This sums it up

Dont bind yourself to a 40% slower CPU for ever, to gain nothing (GPU wise) temporarily.

Your card will perform the same with either CPU. But there are some games (BF 3 for example) that will run much better on

the faster quad CPU. It's just a very CPU intensive game.

And what Quiz said. If you can game until affording the 7850 or 7870, you will have then gained so much more than dollars

can equate to in terms of satisfaction. And if not, and you have to choose a somewhat lesser card sooner, so be it, you have lost

nothing, while ensuring your running all the processes possible.

Thanks folks.

I am hoping that GW2 will run at least slightly better on this new set-up than it did on my current one, while maintaining the 550. But if not, at least it wont run any worse.

And soon enough I'l lhave the 7850 at minimum, and maybe even a 7870, and things should be great for quite a while :)

I just wanted to update this thread with the outcome.

I went ahead and built the i5 3570k with the Asrock extreme 4 z77 board and 8gb of gskill sniper ram which is lower profile so I didn't run into any issues with a 212 evo cooler.

I have not OC'd yet, I want to run a week or so and let the arctic 5 cure, as well as monitor everything at stock first.

I kept the 550ti for now.

My framerate jumped from 19 - 23 average in GW2 on low/med settings (with the old x2 4200+) to 50 - 60 average on high/ultra settings with the new proc.

I have all settings maxed except I turn post processing off due to personal preference, and supersampling is off. if I activate supersampling I drop to mid 30's for fps.

The game looks amazing and plays as smooth as butter for me now! And they're still optimizing, so it will likely get even better.

I'll be picking up the 7850 or 7870 soon enough, but for now I am extremely happy and wanted to swing back in and really thank you guys for your advice here. You definitely helped me make a fantastic decision that I am very happy with!

With the proc and board bought at Microcenter, and everything else bought at new egg, so far:

i5 3570k
Asrock Extreme 4 z77
8gb Gskill Sniper (1600)
Rosewill Challenger U3 case
Hyper 212 cooler
Windows 7 home prem. oem

My total spent was 520.00

vid card will push me into the 750 range.
Not bad at all for this build imo. it really soars so far!

Why the heck didn't this post format correctly? I have paragraphs in the original! lol