After watching Logan's new video today about the budget build, he brought up the XFX 7850 which I had never really given any thought to, since I was primarily looking at a 7870. I obviously have kind of a tight budget but I want to build a computer that will last me for the next 3-4 years, and by that point hopefully be able to play those game fine at medium settings while playing current ones such as FC3 on very high(not important to have ultra).
This worked well for the system that I have now, but with graphics and CPUs making such an advance to keep up with what developers are making, I'm not sure this gamble would play out so well this time. I checked some benchmarks for the XFX 7850 and in VH, it seems it can barely produce smooth frame rates in uber intense games such as FC3. I would rather pocket the extra $50 and not go for the 7870, but I have also heard that GPUs are much more important that CPUs these days. I obviously wouldn't know since I made my current build in 2009. :P
Another thing I have been looking at is ditching Windows completely and switching to Linux. Obviously, I have been doing quite a bit of testing and will continue to do so, to determine if it really fits my needs and wants, but it seems that most of my games run pretty good using Wine. Game speeds and grahpics drivers are a bit of a pain sometimes. I am not even concerned as far as productivity, since Linux has that base covered very well. This is a very serious question though. Would you recommend someone to use just Linux for their gaming rig, or is this a pipe dream?
Yet another question is about the GPU in general. Right now I am running a GTX 260 Core 216. It has become quite a turd with modern games, but I have read some very, very promising things with the Radeon 8000 series, I am very tempted to hold off for another 6 months until their release. I can;t find anywhere that nails down even an approximate release date on the 8000 series, with some placing it at the end of 2013. I personally don't want to wait that long, but could if my new parts were enough to get my GTX through until then.
As for parts, here is what I have planned. And I don't want to hear a bunch of bullshit from Intel fanboys. Keep that shit to yourself.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Fd46
As for HDD and Optical drive, I can pull those from the build that I have right now.
If I do go with the XFX 7000, I have noticed that they have the Double D(two fans) and Core edition(one fan) for their GPUs. The DD has a higher clock but for the 7850 for instance, the Core is $190 while the DD is $230, as much as a 7870 Core edition. Is the extra fan and that extra 100mhz clock really worth it or do they just try to boast that crap up too much?