paddys09 :
If thats the case then theres no point spending any money now, I would just wait for haswell as its a completely different platform... whats your current system like?
I don't have one. This is my first build. My already terrible laptop crapped out on me not too long ago and I'm stuck unable to really play any games. So I'm kind of desperate which is why I don't want to wait until Haswell. Also, I probably won't upgrade the second Haswell comes out. Might upgrade anywhere between a couple months to a year later. If I wait until the latter, I'll just get intel's next gen cpu.
So to be straightforward, I don't really consider waiting an option : /
I could do something more balanced like an i5 3450 and 7850, or wait a (painful) month for a sale on a 7870, but that's about it. Another downside to that option is that when I upgrade, I'd eventually have to pay more money to upgrade both the cpu and gpu, whereas if I get a phenom 965 and 7950 now, I can stick with the gpu for a good long time and only have to really worry about upgrading the cpu in a year or so.
Also, the sapphire 7950 currently comes with an amazing deal of 3 free games and 20% off another one
But out of curiosity, what would the fps difference be between a 7950 with 965 and an i3 3220 with 7870?