Build a gaming PC under $650

I'd suggest a card with 2GB of video memory atleast, since you said youll be playing games like skyrim and GTA IV. Open world games especially if you intend to play skyrim with the high res texture packs require quite a bit of video memory.

Some thing like this perhaps -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

I know its about 50$ more expensive than the card you listed but it is definitely more value for money and gives more performance per dollar than the 6850. Here are some comparison benchmarks between the two cards. Plus its the OC version from sapphire which will give you a slight bit more performance and it comes with a farcry 3 + Medal of Honor (2 games) coupon which you can use or might be able to sell to make up for the difference.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/539?vs=549

if you want the 6850 get the 6870 i made a huge mistake because its +10fps for like 15 dollars 10 fps is a LOT for 10 dollars,

it can run gta just not maxed

also for gaming i recommend getting a better mouse because 800dpi is excruciatingly slow

With current drivers, the reference 7770 is just a little behind the 6870 and some factory overclocked models meet or beat the 6870, all while using much less power and being much cheaper. The 6870 is too close to the 7850 in price anyway.

yeah i guess your right, i recommend adding the 50 to your budget to get a card that can max bf3 rather than get a card that can only play it at high with no aa

I agree, my point was that there isn't really much incentive to even consider the older cards.

excellent choices on most of your components, i would go with a western digital caviar blue/black for your hard drive though. and what the other guys say for the graphics card.

here is a better mouse
http://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-3-Button-Wired-Mouse...

keyboard
http://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-KU-0833-Wired-Keyboa...

Agreed on hard drive. Western Digial's Caviar Blues and Blacks are much more reliable than Hitachi's competing drives right now and the Blues are often about the same price (a new 1TB Caviar Blue model is literally available for only $10 more than that hard drive that OP picked out).

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/western-digital-internal-h...

EDIT: My bad, it's $15 now, prices have gone up $5 since I checked yesterday.

you can have a 7850 for not much more

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

there are a lot of good hard drive deal on amazon, you might be able to shave $10 off of that

yeah i love my caviar black it works really well, and i heard the blue is good as well

i love my black too, i use it as my data/backup drive. i bought a 1.5tb refurb for an excellent price but it was doa so WD gave me a free upgrade to a brand new 2tb, very satisfied with it, never had a problem with it

yeah i have a 1tb for everything and it works fine

also had a green, but that thing was crap, i think it was a sata 1 or 2 that was also a refurb, got it for $40 sold it for $50 after the hard drive shortage.

the harddrive shortage?

the hard drive factory floods that caused hard drive prices to sky rocket for over a year

They're still very high compared to early 2011 pricing.

True.

their going down though

Back on topic  

Get a better HDD
(Caviar blue or black)
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Cache-Desktop-Dri...
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Internal-D...

get the 7850 because you can max out mostly anything and get good fps
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Get better ram(about the same i use it and it works just fine)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Definetely get a better mouse(im chaging it up you wont be able to play games with that slow of a mouse)
http://www.amazon.com/CM-Storm-Xornet-Switches-SGM-2001...
I know its more(a bit more) but its a great mouse and if you really just cant add the little extra get this
http://www.amazon.com/2000dpi-Speed-Wireless-Gaming-2-4...
or this
http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Optical-Wired-Mouse-910-...

and the keyboard(this is much better for only a little more)
http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-920-002478-Keyboard-K120...

Hope this helps clear up everything we were just discussing  

also really follow these things dont just ignore it because if you do you wont be able to play the games you want maxed(or for skyrim with mods) without lag, and being at medium to high "NOW" this means that when the next generation games come out you will be at low settings(also depends on how well optimized they are), and the next year even have to lower your res  
^
but if you follow it your set for this year on max almost every game, and the next maybe medium high or higher, then maybe low but still a bit hard to tell

Well Im on an incredibly tight budget so if i upgrade the card I have to downgrade the CPU

Should I get the 7850+i3 2120 or the 6850+i5 3570k?

oh well thats a hard one   definetely not the i3 because that would bottleneck your gpu... but here what is your budget for both the gpu and cpu(how much do you have left to spend on that stuff)

I can spend about $340 on the GPU+CPU all together

ok, give me one second...

GPU- 7850
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

CPU-FX-6200
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

and then a new mobo needed
GA-970a-UD3(i use it and it works well for me)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

thats a great build but that puts me at $629 without Shipping/tax which adds about another $100-$150 (Did the math on newegg) Cant I just downgrade the Mobo to this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

And I would like to stick to intel since there is a much better upgrade path than the Amd's if i want an i7 in the future than I can upgrade to one.

Of sure, an i3 is a bottle-neck, but a weaker FX-6200 isn't? Besides, if one is to go for an AMD FX-6xxx CPU, why not get the FX-6300 instead of the FX-6200? It's only slightly more expensive, yet it's a little faster and much more energy efficient.

Besides, an i5 and a 7850 can fit in a $600 budget just fine anyway. Get an AMD build if you want one, just know that an Intel build most certainly is still at least as good of an option.

There is not necessarily a better upgrade path with Intel and the i7s have literally almost zero advantage over the i5s in gaming. AMD's AM3+ platform will be compatible with at least one more generation (probably two) from AMD and that'll probably be a better upgrade path than sticking with LGA 1155.

first off it is not weaker... but i do like your idea but i think that the little extra is just too much

is see what you mean but no it will not cost you 100=150 for shipping thats just crazy

Tech report, Tom's Hardware, Anandtech, and more all say that the i3s are generally faster gaming CPUs than the FX-6200.

what about the 6300? also do you have any proof?

FX-6300 can't beat the FX-8350 (shown as about equal to the i3-3225/3220 in the review) nor can it meet it because it's a lower clocked, lower core count version of the same CPU die. I don't need another test to show that. I most certainly don't need tests to show that the FX-6300 beats the 6200 either because the 8320 versus the 8150 and the 4300 and Trinity A10s versus FX -4100 and FX-4170 shows how Piledriver is superior to Bulldozer even if at somewhat lower frequencies.

EDIT: Also, this:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-a...

The FX-8150 is a generally equally performing CPU in gaming to the FX-6200 and the FX-6300 beat it every time except for in the Star Craft II test.

unless you overclock it   i have my 8120 to 4.7...

oh yeah with that link you are showing me that the i3 does not actually beat the 6xxx   interesting

Those were Windows 8 benchmarks. Besides, these sorts of benchmarks aren't good for comparing very different architectures because they're more synthetic than real-world. They're only good for comparing similarly designed CPUs such as Bulldozer to Piledriver.

:| that makes no sense i think your denying what the benchmarks are saying

What do you mean that makes no sense? How does that not make sense? Techreport proved that measuring mere average FPS is not accurate nor even is it necessarily realistic. That's why Techreport doesn't use it to compare hardware anymore, it's not realistic because the average FPS counts frames in a given second rather than their consistency aka real-world smoothness.

http://techreport.com/review/23246/inside-the-second-ga...

Look this stuff up before making accusations about a subject that you've just proven thatyou don't understand as well as you seem to think that you do. FPS benchmarks are hardly better than synthetics. Real-world tests are frame rate charts and frame latency benchmarks.

you got me there  

well then what do you think? what would suit him?

OP: are you going to be editing any videos?

Using OP's case and PSU:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/nMSu

With the optional mouse upgrade to this should the mouse included with the keyboard not be any good:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gear-head-mouse-lm6000u

i5-2500K, Z68 motherboard, CM H212+ cooler, 2x4GB DDR3-1600 9-9-9-24 1.5V memory kit, WD CAviar Blue 1TB hard drive, decent non-reference Radeon 7850 2GB, and the cheapest DVD/CD burner on pcpartpicker.com.

Optionally, a little over budget but not by far, the Plextor M5S 64GB SSD could be used as a boot drive for another $50. It's one of the fastest and most reliable 64GB SSDs available and although it wouldn't be as versatile as a higher capacity model, it would be better than just using a hard drive and heck, with the SSD, you could also simply get a slower, cheaper hard drive to bring it under the budget since it won't be the system drive, making the hard drive's performance less of an issue.

What do you guys think of this? Did I miss anything?