New System Compatibility Check

Yes, everything will work well. Like Clay said, I'd go with a 7850, although the 560ti and 7850 aren't at the same price point, I think the 7850 is about 10 bucks more~

As far as OC'ing goes, I wouldn't rec commend it on Ivy Bridge. Articles have unveiled a plethora of heating/voltage issues when overclocking Ivy Bridge and ultimately it depends on whatever game your'e trying to play. Most games don't even require an i5 overclock, but if your'e looking to play more CPU intensive game like Starcraft II and GTA 4 then an OC would be somewhat necessary.

The game that I play most often is BF3 that's why I was leaning towards the 560ti. It seems the 7850 beats the 560ti in just about everything except that. Will it really make that much difference going with the 7850 vs the 560ti?

And yes I know not to try to OC without upgrading the cooler just a little tight on cash at the moment and need to get this put together before school starts, thanks for the suggestions on coolers though.

Edit: As far as OCing SB vs IB, I'd seen numbers near 5ghz for the 2500k but assumed that was with a hell of a lot of tweaking, cooling, and luck. I most likely would not push anywhere near that. Would I be better off to push back to the 2500k then?

Going with the 7850 will not give a big performance boost over the 560 Ti, more like 5-8% on average, which is not a deal breaker for the 560 Ti, and BF3 is a nVidia favored game.

As far as the OC'ing, you can OC Ivy Bridge just fine, as long as the voltage is kept at or below the 1.325v level (or as close to stock as possible), otherwise temps can skyrocket in a hurry. An i5-3570K doesn't actually need to OC as high as an i5-2500K because it is slightly more powerful on a per clock cycle basis. OC'ing on Sandy Bridge was excellent, you didn't have to be super lucky to hit 5 GHz on a 2500K (but you are right about needing pretty substantial cooling for it). I wouldn't recommend dropping to the 2500K, since if both it and the 3570K were OC'ed to, say, 4 GHz, you would see a small advantage with the 3570K, again because of the increased IPC.

I have an HD 7850 myself, and I can tell you personally lol that the benchmarks seem to be off. On a Maximum, I average around 45FPS, much more than the 32 or so that AnandTech has listed.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7870-revi... - Here are some TomsHardware benchmarks. (Make sure to pay attention to the 1920x1200 benchmark and not just the 1280x720)

As far as OC'ing, I can see you play BF3, so a mild OC might be necessary. I'd say just get Ivy and sit on stock for now, neither GPU will require OCing to so perform that much better. And with the 5Ghz Sandy, people got to 7Ghz with Ivy Haha

Yeah it depends greatly on exactly what settings are used, and the AnandTech benchmarks are just one reference.

The HIS IceQ X 7850 would be a good buy compared to the 560ti? Worth the $50?

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

I would prefer it personally over the 560 Ti since the 2GB of VRAM on the 7850 is a lot more future proof than the 1GB on the 560 Ti.
And if you get the 2GB 560 Ti, that puts you too close to the price range of the 7870, which is a much more powerful, so I don't recommend the 2GB 560 Ti at all.

So yes, the card you linked is very nice.

Thanks guys, went with the HIS 7850, everything is ordered should have it the beginning of the week.

Best answer selected by muddy83gmc.

On a Maxmium* was a typo -__-

I meant at Maximum settings*