Eh. You can't base quality of product on warranty given. Look up the statistics on the HDD for failure rate, DOA, life span, etc. Samsung's F3 has one of the highest life spans next to WD drives. The black is only good for its 64 MB Cache and 7200 RPM. It has decent bench marks but that's where the SSD comes in. Like I use a Mushkin Chronos 120GB SSD. It has or at least had (a few months ago) the highest benchmarks in it's catagory. (120GB Cata) The read/write speeds were off the chart and the write cycle was something like 5 trillion. (I'd have to look it up again) I use my F3 just as a backup and storage drive and put all my demanding programs on my SSD. E.G. AIDA64 Extreme, JP Power Tools, Sapphire TRIXX, MSI Afterburner, Catalyst, Prime95 (for benching, etc.). I also put my more demanding games on their like BF3 or Shogun 2. It's only 100 USD now for a decent SSD and it makes doing everyday stuff REALLY REALLY awesome. On the other forums I belong to everyone recommends an SSD on a gaming build just because it does benefit the game. Yes RAM, GPU, and CPU do the work load but it still draws information from the drive itself. Hence an SSD benefits this more. It's not as if the game transfers all data to ram. (hahaha)

You make a good point that the WD is a nice drive and SSD are still a luxury to some people, but I find when spending 1500+ USD on a gaming system you better have a fast drive to back it up. I.E. SSD.

Regarding the 570Ti Fermi. Eh. It was just a bad GPU overall. It can't compare in terms to how the 670 is doing. (Not literally comparing GPUs) but what I mean is that the 670 compared to the 680 is amazing. The 570 compared to the 580 is horrible and the 480Ti is probably one of the best GPU Nvidia ever made. Sad to say it is now out dated but the 480Ti still benchmarks better than a 570Ti. This is why it sucks. http://www.hwcompare.com/9000/geforce-gtx-480-vs-geforce-gtx-570/
Now you compare a 580 to a 670 and the 670 whipes the floor with anything but another 670, 680, 690, 7970, and soon (fingers crossed) 7990.
http://www.hwcompare.com/12523/geforce-gtx-580-vs-geforce-gtx-670/

Furthermore the reason the 570 was a joke is that a 6870 or a 6950/6970 destroys the 570. Look up the older benchmarks from say 2010-2011. The 570 cost 270-300 USD on newegg. The 6870 cost 170 USD on newegg and is much better than a 570. For the same price you can CFX 2 6870 and destroy a 580. Now in regards to a 6750/70 those were shitty too.

Best GPUs that will still push most games are as follows:
AMD: 6870, 6970, 6990 - (Still one of the best GPU EVER!), 7850, 7870, 7970, 7970 GHz Edition (I don't mention reference models because the 70s cost a tad bit more and do much better.) The release of the GHz E. is also a miracle (NVidia is responsible due to the 670 hype.) in that for 10 bucks more you can get the same card with 50+ base clock. So instead of paying say 470 for a 7970 at 1000 MHz CC you get 480 bucks and a 7970 GHz E. at 1050 MHz CC. That is one hell of a 10 dollar boost!

Now where you 570 is concerned, it cost 300 bucks for it's fastest model and it clocked at about 800. 300 bucks on Radeon side gets you a 7870 clocked at 1100 MHz. Now you can't really compare clocks and say this one is better than that but with a difference of that much and a faster memory interface the 7870 dominates the 570.

Now you move to a 6970, which is lesser than a 7870 and you pay 300+ USD. Some of these 6970 are 350, 370 bucks! The more than a 7870 and suck way worse. Never get a 7700 series btw. Worst cards ever.

As far as Nvidia is concerned.
Nvidia: 480Ti, 580, 590s, 670, 680, 690. Nvidia hasn't done too hot until these 670s and 680 Keplar sets came out. Which is ironic considering I said "too hot". Which is why nividia was hurting. Now probably the worst/highest GPU heat to power ratio would have to be the 6990 CF or a Asus Mars II which is doubtfully the biggest monster daddy card of all time. (It requires 21 or 24 power pins!) I forget. But it dominated every card ever made and probably still does. I mean on AVP with one card is was getting 130+ frames. 2 CF Mars II was 3000 dollars and they only made 10,000 in the whole world. These two cards pumped out heat like a bus in Arizona not going the speed limit!

But back to Nvidia. Nvidia's problem for years was their power consumption. Their 580s were second only to 6990s and ASUS Mars II (Both of which are dual GPU VGA cards while the 580 is a single.) All these cards just produced tremendous heat outputs and DRAINED power like no other. Until recently AMD dominated them but Nvidia decided to play it cool and hold off on releasing their cards until AMD did. They reversed engineered the cards and found a way to get the power of the 7970s along with the reduced power requirements. Hence now they can make faster cards that require less power.

Regardless the top card to get I.E. the best performance to price ratio are: 670, 480, 7970 GHz, and I'd say the new 660. Unless you count the Sapphire Toxic 6GB or the EVGA 680 SC OC'd. Which boost clock is something like 1150, (unheard of for Nvidia).

There you have it. GPU in a nut shell for the last 3 years. I am hoping* by December the new Sea Island chipset for AMD will release but with AMD firing/letting go people who knows!?


On to this guy's question: If you want to push your PC to the limit using a game and not software I'd say Metro 2033 or Crysis 1 would be your end all. You said ASUS PC so it sounds like a prebuilt. When they release the Cry3 Engine that will probably melt everyone's PC. Imagine how bad DOOM 3 was when it was going to release. Everyone wanted it so bad and it was so damn demanding that people bought entire new systems just to run it. Crysis is like that. I am prepping my system to max it out but it's going to be hard on 2 CF 7970. Maybe to 680 SC OC'd but we are talking both under water.

So yeah. Here is my list of games that are hard as shit to run. AVP, Crysis 1 and 2, Metro 2033, BF3, Minecraft (ok I troll), HAWX is pretty tough,

Crysis 1 is by far harder than Crysis 2: Here is a GPU chart showing how an ASUS MARS II card of all cards is struggling to push Crysis 1 compared to Crysis 2. (Mind you this card is a complete monster and released for over 1000 dollars) They still cost like 1500 to get.

Crysis 1: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/Mars_II/11.html
Crysis 2: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/Mars_II/12.html

Sorry for the wall of text. I hope this explains a lot to everyone!

Edit: Man I had to edit a lot of typos lol.

Double edit: It must be late because I have edited errors in this post about 20 times now. lol

I didn't get the full specs of that (e.g. is there a Blueray drive, or DVD-RW?), but that same machine can be had for considerably cheaper too. The setup which I'm looking for has DVD-RW drive (as I am not going to watch Blueray movies on it, I think), has "only" 8Gb of RAM (not 12 as that setup), but on the plus side it has a 750GB hard drive, instead of 500GB on that Amazon setup.

It costs 1399€ here in Finland, that one was £1549.99 (~1969€). I hope to be getting it next week, I know I have been talking about it for weeks, if not months, already...

Those two examples have Geforce GTX670M, which is pretty powerful Fermi-based 3D laptop chipset. For some reason ASUS has recently also released another G75 variant with GTX660M, which is based on the newer Kepler architecture, but is still somewhat slower than GTX670M. Here in Finland that variant is priced 1299€, 100€ lower.

I am kinda wishing to get a G75 with the new GTX680M (no idea if such variant is coming out), but then again 670M seems to run pretty much all current PC games great on high details, and most current PC gaming hardware will probably become obsolete for next-gen ports/games (when new consoles finally come out).

Ps. As it happens, I happened to notice a full-page ad for ASUS G75 in the largest Finnish magazine today, and it appears they are starting to sell them now on mom/pops stores as well, not only dedicated computer shops anymore. ASUS has suddenly started pushing it strongly... It could mean a new version is coming (with GTX680M?), but I think G75 has proved itself already so I feel confident buying it.

On a personal note, I'd never buy a desktop ever again. 3 years using my ASUS G71G lappy, it plays everything I throw at it. Plus, it is portable, something a big, fat desktop machine can only dream about.
No doubt you can find it cheaper, didn't really search for a good price.

Yeah, it was just a general warning that there seem to be so many different G75 setups with wildly different prices. Just a mere Blueray drive (instead of DVD-RW) seems to increase the price 150€ (or was it even more), and the G75 models with the 3D screen are closer to 2000€ (did that variant have the 3D screen? I personally am not interested in that feature, at least for now, at least on a laptop.).

The stripped down 1399€ version seems to be the best selling G75 variant at the moment and it does seem to offer the most bang for the buck. I had hard time locating it in shops the last few weeks, sold out everywhere and the little they got went instantly, but the premium models with Blueray, 3D screens etc. just seemed to stay in their inventories.

I've felt the same way for a long time already. For me it is a big plus I can use the machine in various spots in the apartment, or even take it abroad. Plus, since I keep around retro-gaming machines, it is much easier to keep them around in laptop form, instead of old desktops, sometimes maybe even requiring their own monitor. I wouldn't be surprised that ASUS G75 will become my future retrogaming-PC, for pre-Win8 era games or so.

Never say never though, at some point it might be that laptop technology is again lagging so far behind the HW requirements of most new-ish PC games that a desktop PC is pretty much the only option to play them. Something that is not the case at the moment IMO. But who knows what happens when the next gen (console) games come out eventually.

But then, I usually lag behind the PC game releases anyway a year or more, so...

And yeah, I am somewhat interested in MS Surface too, even if I don't expect to be playing taxing AAA games on it.

Just buy a top-notch intel i7 processor with a top-notch motherboard with the newest socket. You won't have to upgrade these for like the next 4-5 years or so? Invest into decent RAM as well, it's not that expensive.

There are plenty of older graphics cards out there with enough oomph to run newer games at max/almost max settings so you can initially settle for a mid-range one and then upgrade to a better one as time progresses.

My PC for example. I bought an Intel i7 920 back in 2008 I think. Have it on a random ASUS motherboard with some random DDR3 memory. Over the years I've changed from Radeon 4870 to GTX 285 (BFG) to GTX 580. I've been able to run every single game that I've tried on full settings with those cards. Granted, I don't play many modern games, but the list includes FPSes like all the CoDs and many other modern games.

I've helped two of my friends build rigs over the last few months and gave my older gfx cards to them. Work like a charm with new processors.

First of all, thanks everybody. Your input is greatly appreciated. :)

That said, maybe I shouldn't have posted this thread at all. You see, here in Brazil computer stuff are usually pretty expensive, specially when it comes to GPUs and we usually have a hard time finding specific pieces of hardware.

I have a workmate/friend who has an online store (he sells mainly virgin DVDs, but occasionally other stuff as well) and we spent sometime investigating prices at one of his distributors.

They had great prices, compared to a few others we checked, though he warned me to check a bit more before making a final decision.

Here are some specs (I'm copying names from the printed order screen):

Processor: Core i7-2600 3,4Ghz 8 MB box
Motherboard 1155 P8Z68-V/GEN3 Gigabit
HD 1TB SATA 7200 RPM (I think it's a Samsung one, I'm not very sure right now)
PSU CRATUS 600W 80 Plus PFC Active (Hell if I know what this last part means).
Cooler Hyper 212 EVO LGA 2011/1366/1156/1155
Case HAF 912 Plus
Ge Force GTX 570 1280MB 320BIT DD 5 (I don't remember the manufacturer)

I like the processor on this configuration and the HD, but heck if I know if this motherboard is any good (it's almost the same price as the processor, though). The same applies to the other parts. The store didn't have any memory (weird, isn't it?), but it's easy to find elsewhere and I'll probably stick 2x or 4x 4GB DDR3 RAM of whatever manufacturer I can find that isn't obviously awful.

I was interested in a GeForce GTX 660 or 670, but that one was the best available at the store, besides, it's within the price range I payed for my two earlier GPUs. So I supposed it was good enough. Though now I'm not so sure, since I've saw the discussion here in the thread. A GTX 580 will probably be around 50% more expensive, though.

This whole configuration is actually quite expensive. Compared to what I had in mind, it's quite over and the final cost will come very close to R$ 4000,00. I asked my friend how much he would add to the final price (Since he's actually buying from the distributor to sell to me), but he didn't want to think about it now (he may end up not adding to it, wouldn't be the first time) and he expressed interest in buying my old machine from me, which should help a little bit. I'm pretty sure I won't let it go over the 4K line.

Also, I'd like to add that "Last 5 years" isn't something set in stone to me. I said that because my current PC actually managed to last until now and I could probably spend another year with it. I know that's because of almost everything being made for PC and the now old consoles, but I was kinda hoping to be able to enter the next console generation without much financial effort on my side. But I'll certainly have to change my video board along the way, so be it.

Once again, thanks everybody. If you guys have any warning at all about the pieces I listed, please do comment. :)

The motherboard is solid so nothing to worry about there. You could save a bit of money by going with an i5-2500 instead of the i7-2600, as the differences between the two don't have much of an effect on game performance (short version, the 2500 will give you about the same performance in games as the 2600, but for less money). The main component I'd be worried about is that PSU as I've never heard of that brand, and not even Google seems to be able to dig up any information on it; the PSU is a component you definitely don't want to cheap out on (at worst it malfunctions taking several other components with it, but in less dramatic scenarios a low quality PSU can provide insufficient or inconsistent power, which can manifest in all sorts of annoying ways). You can also drop the CPU cooler if you want to save a bit of money, as both the 2500 and the 2600 (whichever you decide to go with) run fairly cool with just stock cooling unless you overclock them (and the case you chose is spacious with good airflow, so that will only help). Finally, when choosing RAM try to grab something from the motherboard manufacturer's qualified vendors list (which can be found here). Chance are any decent quality RAM will work fine even if it's not on the list, but if all else is equal then choosing something on the QVL just increases the chances of everything working right.

Hum, thanks for the info! The PSU is actually this one: http://www.myatech.com.br/m_product.php?productid=006183

So the manufacturer is called Mymax. I remember my friend saying they're good manufacturers.

Also, I may drop the extra cooler, now that you mentioned. I'll think about the processor, though. The price difference isn't that great actually.

From what I can tell Mymax is regional, which is why I've never heard of them before, but there's still almost no information about them that I can find. I'd be very cautious about going with that PSU.

Build it yourself. Figure out what you plan to use it for.

I built the following, I kept the existing Seagate 400 GB Barracuda SATA2 hardrive, the existing Corsair 750w (3 PCIe GPU connectors) non-HX PSU, the existing LG HDDVD/Bluray reader/Bluray burner drive and gutted the rest.

ASUS ROG Crosshair IV Formula motherboard (110.00 eBay)
Corsair Vengeance 1600C9 DDR3 16Gb RAM (90.00 eBay)
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Ed CPU (90.00 eBay)
Zalman Ultra Quiet CNPS7000V cooler (15.00 eBay)
Vortex 2 computer case (39.00 eBay)

My video upgrade path has ended for now. I stopped with a BFG nVidia geForce 9800GTX+ OC 1 GB. I wanted to play Crysis/Warhead with all the eye candy, and this allowed me to do it. Battlefield 3 plays just fine with it too. All the modern games do, I just don't have DirectX 11 support. Doesn't matter though, they all look pretty enough.