About to pull the trigger. HELP!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

When on a tight budget and you have already listed insxpensive parts and tried to keep the cost down , if you want to go further then hard choices have to be made.
The 6870 may not play BF 3 at the same level of performance as the 6950 but you can save some money here by going with the 6870. The ram listed is 4gb and therefore costs lwss and you can always add another set of the same later on when you have more money. The same goes for the video card in that later on when you have some more money you can always sell the 6870 and get an upgrade.

What is your budget? Do you have any preferences?

For starters, the Antec NEO 520W is $30 cheaper and has the same quality as the Seasonic PSU you have in your build right now.

I'd like to not go over $800, and I have no preferences. Just whatever gets me the best performance.

bud if possible, grab a quad core CPU. I personally have a Q6600, and even at 2.4 ghz, it rips games up. the i5's seem to have a lot of bang for buck.

Then what inzone said is right.

Here's a slightly different part list $745
Intel Core i3-2120 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor
Asus P8H61-M LX PLUS (REV 3.0) Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB Video Card
Cooler Master Elite 430 ATX Mid Tower Case
SeaSonic 520W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply
Asus VW224T 22.0" Monitor

Hope you find it useful....

Good list aaron!

How much of a performance increase would I see in going with the 560 ti over the 6870? Is it worth the extra money?

560ti is comparable to the 6950, so about a 10fps or more difference.

Come on, the 560Ti is an Nvidia product. Better drivers and the possibility of better gaming, as most games are made to perform best on the Intel- Nvidia combo.
BTW, if you're willing to spend to "almost to your ceiling", go for the i5-2300 which is a Quad-core Sandy Bridge.....

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-car...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-o...

Here are a couple of charts to help you see where cpu's and video cards fall in the order of best to last. The i3-2120 is a good choice and has hyperthreading so you have the performance of a quad core. You may want to look around and bargan hunt to see if you can come across a 570 ,6970 or 7850 that's within your budget , don't forget the main component in a gaming rig is the video card and the better the video card the better the performance. The 560Ti is one level above the 6870 so the performance gain will not be that much but it will be a gain and since your still under budget then any futher upgrade will be well worth it when it comes to gaming. Even if you could get a 560Ti 448 core whidh is on the same level as the regular 560Ti , it will give you a little more boost.

Drivers is not the reason why.. It is because of the higher performance gain over the 6870.

Yeah, that's the reason too....
Nvidia RULES!