Mobo and GPU recommendations

[Skorpian]

I thought micro stuttering was an issue only with CF/SLI?

 

[dvoulcaris]

Just providing a bit of input. I know I'm new (very) to this forum, but I have a few suggestions.

Firstly the 7950 vs. the 660Ti. To be perfectly frank, I don't notice stuttering in any game other than Skyrim (which is known for its direct preference of nVidia cards); I have a 7950. The 7950 is an excellent card for me, as I run Eyefinity (triple monitors). However, on a single monitor, you would not benefit from the VRAM advantage of the 7950, and you would be safer with the 660Ti (considering mainly that most games focus on nVidia support).

Secondly, Battlefield 3. It is well known that BF3 benefits from more cores, and so I have to disagree with PP Mguire's recommendation of the i3 3220 and instead recommend something like the 3570K (which I love) -- The 3570 (non-K) is fine if you aren't wishing to overclock. If you're tight on budget, I would still recommend the 3330 over the 3220 (0.2GHz bump from 3.0 with Turbo on the 3330).

If I repeat too much I apologise, but I didn't read everything in-depth and just sort of skimmed over:
- 3570K is great
- 1600MHz is fine
- 700W is a tiny bit overkill I find, 550-600W is probably better for your build unless you're planning on two graphics cards
- HDD is fine, though can I recommend an SSD? The difference is very noticeable with just a $100 investment in an additional SSD
- Since I just read you'll never xfire/sli, I would say 550-600W PSU is enough; spend the extra on an SSD (of course this is just a recommendation, since you have your mind set)

Now I'll go in-depth with graphics cards.
A lot of people say "The 660 is almost a 660Ti". More say "The 660Ti is pretty much a more bang-for-buck 670". Even more say "The 670 overclocks to 680 level and is therefore just as good".

With graphics cards, you get what you pay for. I would say the 670 is probably the best bang for buck in a card, and would recommend against the 660. I would also recommend against the 650--never get the 650, please.

The 660Ti is great and definitely worth the $80 in my opinion. But it is up to you.

1. If you don't plan to overclock, there's no reason to get the K-edition processor with an H77. They are cheaper and do fine for 1600. Don't be dismayed by the x4 PCIe slots; they aren't a biggie in my opinion and the performance difference between x4, x8, and x16 is much less than it implies.

2. Do you want lots of AA? If so, the 7850. If not, I would strongly recommend the 660Ti--great card.

3. Yes. The 660Ti is far superior bang-for-buck.

I do hope someone actually reads this wall of text, but again meh.

 

[PP Mguire]

Just providing a bit of input. I know I'm new (very) to this forum, but I have a few suggestions.

Firstly the 7950 vs. the 660Ti. To be perfectly frank, I don't notice stuttering in any game other than Skyrim (which is known for its direct preference of nVidia cards); I have a 7950. The 7950 is an excellent card for me, as I run Eyefinity (triple monitors). However, on a single monitor, you would not benefit from the VRAM advantage of the 7950, and you would be safer with the 660Ti (considering mainly that most games focus on nVidia support).

Secondly, Battlefield 3. It is well known that BF3 benefits from more cores, and so I have to disagree with PP Mguire's recommendation of the i3 3220 and instead recommend something like the 3570K (which I love) -- The 3570 (non-K) is fine if you aren't wishing to overclock. If you're tight on budget, I would still recommend the 3330 over the 3220 (0.2GHz bump from 3.0 with Turbo on the 3330).

If I repeat too much I apologise, but I didn't read everything in-depth and just sort of skimmed over:
- 3570K is great
- 1600MHz is fine
- 700W is a tiny bit overkill I find, 550-600W is probably better for your build unless you're planning on two graphics cards
- HDD is fine, though can I recommend an SSD? The difference is very noticeable with just a $100 investment in an additional SSD
- Since I just read you'll never xfire/sli, I would say 550-600W PSU is enough; spend the extra on an SSD (of course this is just a recommendation, since you have your mind set)

Now I'll go in-depth with graphics cards.
A lot of people say "The 660 is almost a 660Ti". More say "The 660Ti is pretty much a more bang-for-buck 670". Even more say "The 670 overclocks to 680 level and is therefore just as good".

With graphics cards, you get what you pay for. I would say the 670 is probably the best bang for buck in a card, and would recommend against the 660. I would also recommend against the 650--never get the 650, please.

The 660Ti is great and definitely worth the $80 in my opinion. But it is up to you.

1. If you don't plan to overclock, there's no reason to get the K-edition processor with an H77. They are cheaper and do fine for 1600. Don't be dismayed by the x4 PCIe slots; they aren't a biggie in my opinion and the performance difference between x4, x8, and x16 is much less than it implies.

2. Do you want lots of AA? If so, the 7850. If not, I would strongly recommend the 660Ti--great card.

3. Yes. The 660Ti is far superior bang-for-buck.

I do hope someone actually reads this wall of text, but again meh.

Actually, AMD cards perform better than Nvidia cards in Skyrim. Take a look at the extensive article done with both Windows 7, and WIndows 8 on the 7950 VS 660ti. It was done with multiple games too, explaining exactly why the 660ti is a smoother experience.

To the more cores, no not really. BF3 used 20% of my 3960X with no HT and it currently doesn't take anymore than 35% of my i5 750. Using a 5850 and 6000+ I got a solid 59FPS average as explained in my articled stickied at the top of the sub-forum. That being said, an i3 3220 would perform fine for any game on the market currently when paired with a good GPU.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v701/pp_mguire/Desktops and benchmark/BF3.jpg

 

[Skorpian]

PP mguire, you have a point that in graphs the HD Radeon is more stuttery, but I saw vids of some borderlands 2 gameplay side by side ( blind test ), both in slow motion and normal and could barely find anything in difference between the two.
If the stutter is in a few titles I'm ok but if the stuttering is in many titles then to hell with the 7950. Also, I've read that the 660 Ti 192-bit bus maybe ok currently but won't be as future proof as the 384-bit of the 7950.

 

[PP Mguire]

The bus wont make a difference, and really don't pay attention to such specifications. IIRC the old ATI cards (way back) had a 512bit bus and were terrible. I'll make a more modern comparison, the GTX 680 only has a 256bit bus and so does the GTX 670. Get where I'm going?

It is purely my opinion (though with some educated guessing in there) that the reason for that stuttering on the AMD cards is due to their new drivers. They are trying to force more performance to out do the 600 series due to them falling behind bad elsewhere. This is causing lack of attention to detail in other areas. Honestly, real world performance you probably wont see much of a difference from the 660ti and the 7950. I'll even toss this in here, the 660ti performance is relevant to my 580 and I max any game I want to with ease and probably will do so for time to come. The advantage of having Nvidia drivers overcomes the 1-4FPS difference between the two cards I can guarantee that.

In case nobody wanted to click further than the link previously, here is the full article on that stuttering.
http://techreport.com/review/24022/does-the-radeon-hd-7950-stumble-in-windows-8

 

[Skorpian]

Yes I read as much as I could from that article. However, to show the stuttering they had to slow down the video at like quarter the speed or something IIRC. Would that be really noticeable in real life?
I just want something as future proof as possible, I don't really care which brand my card is.

 

[PP Mguire]

The only way I can explain it is like the difference of having Vsync on and off. Thing is, for them to even do the test they had to of noticed it to begin with. They slowed it down for everybody who reads the article can clearly see the difference. It's not an OMG type of difference but it's there. Most people tend to ignore it.

I can't stress enough how much of a difference AMD and Nvidia are in drivers. The 660ti is definitely the better choice.

 

[Skorpian]

So, the micro stutter is like when I'm playing a game with vsync off and it suddenly goes from 140 fps to like 60 fps or something for a sec then goes back up?

 

[cronus97]

This with a I3 3220 for a cheaper (but not crippled) Intel rig. Especially since you won't be using SLI of Crossfire. If you want to be even more futureproofed go with the I5 2400 or 2500

 

[PP Mguire]

Uh no, micro-stutter causes latency from the image being rendered. How I was trying to explain it with Vsync is when you have Vsync off at high frames you can have screen tearing but you don't see it all the time. This stuttering gives an un-smooth playback experience. Um I guess a better example would be when you're watching a movie and the audio slightly goes off sync slightly for a little bit but then goes back. Not literal examples, but just examples of small annoyances you don't see all the time but know they are there. If that makes any sense. In some games it'll be noticeable in others it wont and sometimes you just have to look for it.

Bottom line though, both cards will still wind up performing similar years down the road so the smart thing to do is go with the 660ti due to better driver support to begin with. Less crashes and headaches makes up.