3DMark suggests that the previous machine’s $600 AMD Radeon R9 290s are faster than the current build’s $520 GeForce GTX 780s, and that makes sense on a price/performance basis.
When I chose them, however, the Radeons were only $400. Now you understand why so many folks considered AMD's Hawaii-based parts to be such a good deal. On the bright side, they've dropped from a high of over $600 to right around $500 more recently.

Most gamers blamed cryptocurrency miners for the shortage of Radeon R9 290 and 290X cards. Availability is improving now, though not before enthusiasts started noticing Nvidia's high-end cards could keep up in disciplines other than scrypt-based mining.

PCMark isn't my favorite benchmark because it doesn't properly reflect the optimizations for six-core CPUs that some of our real-world workloads more prominently show off. On the other hand, it’s a better indicator of performance for ordinary desktop applications, as well as the storage performance of those applications.
- Our High-End Build Evolves
- Graphics, CPU, And Memory
- Motherboard, Case, And Power
- CPU And Motherboard Cooling
- An Alphabet Soup Of Storage: SSD, HDD, And ODD
- Hardware Installation
- Overclocking
- Test Hardware And Benchmark Settings
- Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Results: Battlefield 4 And Far Cry 3
- Results: Grid 2 And Arma 3
- Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Results: Adobe Creative Suite
- Results: Productivity
- Results: File Compression
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- A Gaming Build That Works Hard
1.) Start the system, wait for all processes to load, take a measurement (Active, but idle)
2.) Load the CPU using eight thread of AVX-optimized Prime95, take a reading (CPU Load).
3.) Load GPUs with 3DMark 11 Test 1 in loop, take max reading as it heats up (GPU Load).
4.) Load both applications (CPU+GPU Load).
The "math problem" is that any program used to fully load the GPU also partly loads the CPU. So when test 4 is Prime95+3DMark, Prime95 can only use whatever CPU resources are left with 3DMark running.
So the most accurate system power reading is with "CPU+GPU Load" applied. The system measurement for "CPU Load" still includes the power of an idle GPU. And the system power measurement for "GPU Load" still includes the amount of CPU energy it takes to run the GPU's test application.
Power supplies of greater capacity and similar reliability at this price tend to be lower-efficiency units. And we like efficiency too.
1.) Start the system, wait for all processes to load, take a measurement (Active, but idle)
2.) Load the CPU using eight thread of AVX-optimized Prime95, take a reading (CPU Load).
3.) Load GPUs with 3DMark 11 Test 1 in loop, take max reading as it heats up (GPU Load).
4.) Load both applications (CPU+GPU Load).
The "math problem" is that any program used to fully load the GPU also partly loads the CPU. So when test 4 is Prime95+3DMark, Prime95 can only use whatever CPU resources are left with 3DMark running.
So the most accurate system power reading is with "CPU+GPU Load" applied. The system measurement for "CPU Load" still includes the power of an idle GPU. And the system power measurement for "GPU Load" still includes the amount of CPU energy it takes to run the GPU's test application.
The "math problem" is that any program used to fully load the GPU also partly loads the CPU. So when test 3 is Prime95+3DMark, Prime95 can only use whatever CPU resources are left with 3DMark running.
So the most accurate system power reading is with "CPU+GPU Load" applied. The system measurement for "CPU Load" still includes the reading of an idle GPU. And the system power measurement for "GPU Load" still includes the amount of CPU power it takes to run the GPU.
Very much appreciated and satisfying answer.
Thanks Crashman
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3fuGw
Wondering how much of a difference would non-reference cards make. Obviously, CPU cooler and RAM could be different, BR drive optional, storage drive as well.
Shouldn't that be DDR3-1866?
my fix is get a 700gb ssd, 780ti no sli problems, and a i5 4670, this is a much better gaming pc, and can go quiet build.