$2000 build, or budget pc and wait for Haswell?

realis2012

Honorable
Jul 21, 2012
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10,510
I'm all cashed up at the wrong time. 12 months ago it would have been a no-brainer to build a sandy bridge system, but with haswell next year dropping $2000 on an ivy setup could be pointless.

Currently:
Socket 939 Athlon 64 3700+
2gb Ram
250GTS

Obviously i NEED to upgrade, but the thing is i want to build a pc that is future proof for as long as possible, so here is the question, do i build an $2000 ivybridge system with a ton of RAM and a pair of GTX670s in sli to play today, or build a small G530 system with my gts 250 and finally play Crysis, FC2, Metro etc the way they are meant to be played for a short time, and then build a killer Haswell system on release 2013?

Possible builds:

i5 or i7 Ivy Bridge
8/16/32gb of 1600mhz ram
sli motherboard
2 x GTX 670s

or

short term
G530
4gb 1333mhz ram
keeping gts 250

Will Haswell be worth it? Buying a newly released CPU with a new socket could be trouble. The important thing to remember is i NEED a new system now.
 

theLiminator

Distinguished
Jan 16, 2010
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18,690
If you really need a system now, there is no reason not to get your performance system. It sounds like you're mostly into gaming, if so, there is no reason not to get Ivy Bridge. Games nowadays are hardly CPU limited, and even if Haswell was a 40% upgrade in terms of CPU performance, your gaming will probably hardly increase in frame rate (though there are a few CPU limited games). Btw, for gaming 8gb of ram is quite a comfortable amount to live with, and you can always add more in the future.
 

realis2012

Honorable
Jul 21, 2012
3
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10,510
You'll be thrilled to know i completely ignored your advice :D .

I got an Asrock H61M-HVS, G530 and 2x2 gbs of Patriot ram. Ive hit that spot of 30 frames a second in Crysis and Far Cry 2 when under pressure, so thats good. The motherboard supports Ivy Bridge and K series, so i'll happily be able to spend another $600 sometime in the near future on a much better CPU and a GPU that will play nice with a 450w PSU.