Is this a good gaming PC?

Hello

Everythink looks good.

Yes they both overclock the same. I'h seen people posting they managed to overclock to 3.7-3.8 safely. So with a little bitt of work you should be capable of achieving 4GHz with no problem  

Also a like the GPU you picked  

Good luck with your built and ENJOY  

Dave

CPU: Swap it for a X4 955 and save some money. It's basically the same chip, so you can overclock it to roughly the same levels fairly easily.

RAM: I'd pick up some CAS Latency 7 sticks. G.Skill's Ripjaws are excellent.

GPU: I'd consider a single 5870 instead (or a single 5970). You'd get high enough performance right now (the 5870 can max out any game at 1080p resolutions), and leave yourself room to upgrade. I'm not a huge fan of the 6xxx series, as they're kind of weak for the extra money.

PSU: If you didn't already have the Thermaltake, I'd recommend a 750W-850W unit from Corsair, Antec, SeaSonic, Silverstone or XFX. They've got higher quality units. The higher wattage would be useful to support the higher end GPU I'm recommending.

I've actually already got a 955, but its the C2 revision, and I cant get it past 3.6GHz. Also, have you seen the 6850 crossfire reviews? They're excellent, two 6850s are on par with one 5970, they scale very well, use less power, heat and cost less. So I'm pretty much decided with two 6850s. Although thermaltake arent the most popular brand of PSU, they're still very good, and 650w is more than capable of powering the system. But yeah, I might go with RAM that has lower timings.

I find it hard to believe 2 6850s are on par with 5970.

I find it hard to beleive too, but look at the benchies:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_6850_C...

I see what you are saying but they only used one game for a benchmarking. I would like to see more.

The benefit of the 5970 is that you can overclock it a lot higher than a Crossfire setup. The 5970 at stock is two 5850s, but it's actually dual 5870s. You've got a lot of extra headroom there. In addition, if you go the Crossfire route, you've eliminated an upgrade path. If you get a 5970, not only will you get amazing performance right now, and you'd still have the ability to drop in the second one later and extend the life of the build by a good number of years.

Also, not every game will support Crossfire, so for some games you may be limited to using a single one of the fancy cards you've bought. Your performance will drag to a halt in those games.

Wait, tomorrow is HD 6950/6970 launch date.

+1 for this.

No they didnt, at the bottom of the page there is a drop-down list for different games (you probably missed it)

The 5970 does use crossfire, it just doesnt use two PCI-E slots. In a game that doesnt support crossfire, the 5970 will do badly as well. And I can always just sell my two 6850s if I wanted to upgrade.

I've looked at the bechmarks for these new cards, and they seem to be a bit of a fail. The 6970 loses to the GTX 570 in most games

No it doesn't. Conceptually, yes, but not in practice. The 5970 isn't going to become half of what it is in games that don't support Crossfire.

It's also completely worthless to say "I can just sell XXX". You can do that with anything. The point here isn't to NEED to sell stuff to get the performance you want, it's to buy the performance to start with. Also, no one knows what the value of any piece of technology is going to be at any point down the road.

i think going with a 5970 is your best bet

You should get a new Radeon HD 6970.

When you decide get a second and put it in crossfire it's the second best xfire/sli setup available, barely being beaten by sli GTX 580's. It will also cost a heck of a lot cheaper too, and use less power.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4061/amds-radeon-hd-6970-...

I don't think your power supply would handle the crossfire cards, 650 watt would be cutting it very close.

@amk09: I'm failing to see how the 6970 at $370 is a better idea. Yes, once you Crossfire it, it's more powerful than the 5970 (barely), but it'd also cost $270 more. Why wouldn't you just spend the extra $100 over the 6870 and get the 5970?

The 5970 is only $470? Wow, I didn't realize that.

Do you think a Phenom II x4 955 would be able to push 2 5970's if he crossfired in the future?

Also, from the benchmarks I have seen crossfire 6970's beat the 5970 pretty soundly. Even crossfire 6950's beat it. But as you said, they should, as they would cost more.

I'm just weary about the 5970 because I've heard about driver issues and other issues as well, because its a dual gpu card. Then again, I have no experience with it so I'm not sure.

Any CPU would hold back dual 5970s, so there's no way around that. Perhaps Bulldozer won't, but it's unlikely.

There are always going to be driver issues with any card. They come and go, so that shouldn't really be a factor.

Two 6850s beat the 5970 in most games, just look at the link for the benchmark results that I posted earlier

Sorry guys, but no amount of convincing is going to stop me from getting two 6850s  
My CPU is probably not good enough for anything better than two 6850s, so when I next upgrade, I might as well replace the whole system

Should I go with 1333MHz CL7 RAM instead of 1600MHz CL9?
How about two of these modules?
http://www.saverstore.com/product/20069809/7725665/King...

Bump

You can get those
http://www.saverstore.com/product/20034974/Kingston-KHX...