I'll be upgrading my rig within the next year or so. I have some parts picked out for it, but I'd also like some suggestions on the parts I have in mind. I do gaming, as well as some video rendering and editing.
Here's what I'll be upgrading:
CPU - i5 3570k
GPU (not sure about this one) - Either a GTX 670, a Radeon HD 7970, or GTX 660 TI SLI
RAM - G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 at 2133 MHz
SSD - Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB
Thanks in advance.
Thats looking like a solid upgrade path to me, but I don't know if you should be scratching together the upgrade this early, the tech industry moves quickly and new iterations are likely to be released before you made the upgrade, so you'd have to adjust it then. But if you were to be upgrading right now, that looks like a solid path, I'd probably take the HD 7970 over the other two, it generally performs better than the GTX 670 and SLI/XFire can sometimes be hit and miss on different applications.
Looks good to me. When it comes to the graphics card, the dual GTX 660TI's in SLI are going to give you the best performance out of all of your other choices. If you don't want to go the SLI route, though, it would be better to get the 7970, since they're already more powerful than the GTX 670 and you can overclock them to be more powerful than the GTX 680.
I really like the RAM and SSD selections.
As far as the CPU goes, you usually want an i7 for rendering, but an i5 should still be pretty fast, and it will definitely be enough for gaming. If you have the money, get an i7 instead, but if you can't afford it then just go for the i5.
I'll probably hold off a while longer, as NVIDIA and AMD will likely have a new generation of graphics cards by the time I would upgrade my machine. Although I'll probably be leaning towards an AMD card. I will add in a few new parts that I desperately need (power supply, the aforementioned SSD and RAM) as well as a new, much larger case. It'll be mostly used just for gaming, with some light rendering and editing on the side. Nothing that would really warrant the extra money for an i7. Although if I can find one at a farly good price range, I'd definitely consider it.