Deciding on a new GPU to get later this year.

[PCMau5]

Hello!

I have recently had enough of my system not being able to run my games on the settings they deserve, so i thought about a complete PC upgrade.

I have planned out the part's I am going to be buying over the course of the year.

I have currently:
CM Storm Enforcer case
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 @ 2Ghz
4GB 333Mhz DDR2 Ram (Yes this completely slows down my games, getting a new motherboard with ram cpu etc.)
Asus P5Q Pro motherboard
XFX Radeon HD 5770 1GB Graphics card

What I'm going to get soon:
New motherboard: ASUS Sabertooth 990Fx
New Ram: 16GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600Mhz (4x4GB Kit)
New CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T (Or 1055T, just stuck on what one, advice would be good )
New Heatsink: Noctua NH-D14

Here's what I'm stuck on, i have a choice of a few graphic's cards.

I have about up to £225 budget on one, if anyone could add any suggestions that would be great,
here's what i have come up with for choices so far.

MSI Twin Frozr II GTX 570 1.28GB (I had heard about these card's running pretty hot :O)
XFX Radeon HD 6950 2GB
MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition/OC Graphics card - 2 GB - GDDR5 SDRAM

Or if you have any good suggestions please help and post below!

Thanks

 

[PCMau5]

Sorry about double post but i couldn't edit.

I am going to think about Crossfiring/SLI so, i think i would prefer the ATI card's for better scaling and better temperatures.
But I would still consider an Nvidia card if presented with a good card

 

[Hallowhead]

i would go with either a gtx 570 or a 580.
or you could get two gtx 560ti's and sli them which is cheaper than a 580 but you will get better performance

 

[frombehind]

since you said "planning to get parts over the course of the year" I would personally recommend wating a few months and picking up a 7k series amd card (preferably dual or triple fan version) in the flavor of your favorite amd manufacturer, right about the time the gefroce 6xx (or 7xx, if thats what Nvidia desides to call them) series come out.

Prices should drop by then, and the 7k series gpus, even with relatively immature drivers are already showing great prommise with DX11 games, and with overclockabilty, if thats your thing.

 

[jyjjy]

Why an AMD cpu? Intel currently outclasses AMD in price vs performance in all segments really, especially in gaming.
If you are buying the parts over an extended period you should leave the motherboard, cpu and video card until the end. The optimal choices for those parts have yet to be released(Z77, i5-3570k, HD7850/70 or GTX 660/670) but will be within the next few months.

 

[PCMau5]

I am going with an AMD CPU as i personally prefer them for thing's i am going to be doing, i would like to be able to render, play games on highest at the same time, without much frame drop, my friend on his AMD Phenom II X6 1090T can play BF3 On ultra while recording and rendering with about 60FPS. (Rendering with Sony Vegas Pro 11)

 

[jyjjy]

I would highly recommend taking a hard look at the Ivy Bridge benchmarks once they come out. For now here is the 1090t vs the i5-2500k;
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=146
Overclocking and the advance to Ivy Bridge is going to make the already large advantage for the Intel chip much larger. Unless you have a compelling reason to go with AMD outside of performance it really isn't the best way to go.