
Video Card: PowerColor PCS+ AX7870 Myst Edition
AMD’s Tahiti LE GPU hit the PC gaming scene hard with shocking value from three launch partners, all of which were safe bets in my experience. Somehow, the only model in stock on the day we placed our order from Newegg was the same one we tested for that launch, PowerColor’s PCS+ AX7870 Myst Edition. Clocked at 925 MHz core (975 MHz Boost) and with 2 GB of GDDR5-6000, my only reservation about the recommendation Igor gave the card was PowerColor's relatively brief two-year warranty coverage.
Read Customer Reviews of PowerColor's PCS+ AX7870 Myst Edition
I was also forced to set aside my reservations about axial-flow fans that recirculate exhaust air inside a chassis, since no Tahiti LE-based cards were available with centrifugal coolers. That's probably just as well, though, since I couldn't afford a quiet-enough case to stifle the added noise most of those blower-style designs generate.
CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K
Intel’s Core i5-3570K gives up around 3% of the Core i7-3770K’s clock rate, a little shared L3 cache, and Hyper-Threading in return for around 30% cost savings, making it a clear value play.

Read Customer Reviews of Intel's Core i5-3570K
Lacking the budget for a higher-end Core i7 processor, I'm hoping that most of our benchmarks don't punish me for giving up the ability to schedule to eight threads simultaneously.
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4
Weary of the weak voltage regulator found in our previous build, we decided to take a chance with an less expensive board that advertises a few extra voltage phases. Phase count isn’t nearly as important as total amperage capacity, but at this price, we were forced to stick with a known part that'd be good enough or gamble on something that might have worked better (but maybe not).
Read Customer Reviews of ASRock's Z77 Extreme4
We gave ASRock’s Z77 Extreme4 a similar rating as Gigabyte’s Z77X-D3H, though our round-up’s overclocking test was performed at a mere 1.25 V processor voltage setting. The Z77X-D3H later proved itself incapable of supplying stable current at voltage levels beyond 1.25 V, and we were shooting for around 1.28 V when we discovered that problem. We’ll “go there” again today.
- Can $1,000 Buy A High-End PC?
- Graphics, CPU, And Motherboard
- DRAM, Storage, And Optical Drive
- Case, Power, And CPU Cooling
- Hardware Installation
- Overclocking
- Test Settings And Benchmarks
- Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Results: Battlefield 3 And F1 2012
- Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim And StarCraft II
- Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Results: Adobe Creative Suite
- Results: Productivity
- Results: File Compression
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Could We Have A Value Winner At $1,000?


Now instead of insults I can tell people "Don't be a stoogie". Thanks!
Otherwise, not much wriggle room here. Nice build!
Using the drive performance measurement to reflect program load times means loading all the programs on the SSD. And that explains why SSD capacity wasn't sacrificed to make more room in the budget for an HDD.
Looking from another perspective, these two builds, with two different builders, with $200 difference, just show(again) how much better price/performance wise are Intel CPU's and AMD GPU's.
I see your point, but I'd rather see slower game loads and better FPS , than faster game loads and lower FPS. And, the OS is accelerated in both cases anyway.
But hey, I'm on board with the 7870 Myst Edition CrossFire suggestion...I'll see if we can make it happen!
I think theres something to be said about the value at above $1000 though.. past this price range, people really start caring about having a nice case, nice cooler, etc that are more than just performance but aesthetics too.
Most likely they'd end up with a similar ugly case that no one would really want, possibly the same memory and hard disk, but the heart of the system would always be different.
Besides, people love rivalries. Sure, AMD processors blow in absolute performance, but they're cheap, and maybe the video card can save the day against the evil Intel/NVIDIA empires. It's a lot more interesting than testing two essentially identical machines, except for the hard disk.
Do it for different price ranges, and it might even be more competitive. $500, $750, and $1000 might not all have the same winner.
Pair a AMD CPU with a Nvidia GPU. So its expensive and may not perform as well.
(I will be extremely happy if this build performs well)