I5-3470 + GTX 660 2GB VS i3-3220 + HD 7950 2GB

i5 + GTX 660. It will be useful on games that use 4 cores, like battlefield 3, and for general productivity. The difference between GTX 660 and HD 7950 isn't that huge - 10% at most.
 

Sret43rg

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Sunius, i think you are thinking of the GTX 660Ti, i am getting the GTX 660 Non Ti and it is slightly weaker than the 7870 and it is no where near the performance of the 7950.
 
No, I am not. I may have misjudged it a bit though, HD 7950 is around 15% faster.

perfrel.gif
 

viridiancrystal

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^^ that chart had results from the launch drivers. AMD's 12.7 and 12.11 both came with ~5-10% performance gains. The 7950 is in a completely different tier.

It will mostly depend on what games your planning on playing. Do a little bit of research, if many of them are CPU dependent, go for the i5 build, if many of them are GPU dependent, go for the i3 build.
 

paddys09

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Hey Sret43rg,

Still not made your mind up yet? Get the i5 and 660, like sunius said it only really effects high resolutions with lots of AA, which is kind of redundant anyway as you wont need maxed out AA at those res's...

The only other suggestion I have is to get the unlocked i5, I know you really don't need it now, but once your processor starts to age it could give you that boost you need

 

sunnk

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look man a i5 3470 with gtx 660 is more then enough for gaming you dnt need to get an i5 unlocked its another thing if u like to overclock but that i5 is also nice one gives same performance as unlocked.unlocked i5s have only overclocking advantage nothing above that i think u dnt need to:)
 

egilbe

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that's not a downgrade, that's a slight upgrade
 

Sret43rg

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The 7870 is around £10-£15 more in my country (UK) and i am already stretching my budget by buying the GTX 660 unless i can find one for the same price on Amazon.co.uk, Scan.co.uk or cclonline.com