Switching from Intel i7 960 to AMD for Gaming, Best Option?

[elmorejohn46]

I agree your 960 when overclocked is going to be faster then any amd chip.Juts get a HD7950 or a HD-7970 and overclock your CPU.

[sf101]

agreed oc the cpu should hit at least 4.0 on a decent air cooler.

and then either crossfire your 6870 with another 6870 or sell it you might get 100 bucks for it, I've seen them new on sale for like $120 recently.
if you decide to sell you could go with a 7950 or a 660 on the cheaper side if you watch some sales or do some price matching.

either way id keep the 1366 over a new amd setup as the oc'd performance is still there.

[Dragonstongue]

SSD and gpu upgrade would be your best bet. A 7870 is quite a bit faster then a 6870 as well, I have both, the difference is actually quite large.
i7 960 @4.0Ghz is still hella fast, a 955/965, 1090/1100t, FX 8350 FX6300 and such are not faster then it, unless you got a sweet 955/965 or thuban to clock up to say 4.4Ghz or better and not need an uber cooler(unlikely)

Like pointed out, FX chips just arent there yet, great multi-core performance, but few games rely on this, Phenom II x4 and x6 are competative to core i7 first gen and somewhat second gen(purely for gaming) but are not better, and at least the core i series are more then a one trick pony, first gen also had some features then second and third gen did not.

[Soullessone21]

I have owned a lot of AMD and the last year a lot of intel currently thanks to the forum I am running on a 920 at my temp home till I can move my systems and family here.

In order of fastest to slowest that I have owned. C32 Dual 8Core 4280 3.6Ghz Then 3770K 5Ghz Then 920 4.1Ghz Then 8150 at 5.2Ghz then 1090t at 4.4Ghz then 1055 at 4Ghz then last my slowest my mobiles all of which not worth getting into.

The 1366 is still a power house I'm running one right now with my 660 and the CPU is no were near the bottle neck I am actually seriously considering keeping this 1366 as my main rig for some time and just going up to a second 660 and upgrade your Barts card the 6870 is not a power house these days and most people complain it Xfires like a POS but I did not have issues Xfiring mine. go with a 7870 or 660/660Ti and a nice SSD and you will be happy :D

[WhippWhapp]

$300 for AMD mobo/chip/ram that will upgrade FPS vs. i7 960?

Not going to happen.

[sf101]

the 6870 was actually one of the good ones to crossfire
it was the 5xxx series that had horendous crossfire scaling they fixed it in the 6xxx series your off by a series soul :P

[upcoast604]

Definatly keep the 960 cpu and overclock it.
HD 7970: Bulldozer vs. Sandy Bridge vs. Nehalem Review | techPowerUp

Crossfiring 6870s, most games that I have do ok with it but the ones that don't are BF3, mafia II and cod black ops.

Some games that I have that work well with 6870s xfire are Crysis 2, bfbc2, sniper elite v2.

I'd also suggest a 7950/70, the problem with 6870s is 1GB ram.

[igot6strings]

Thanks for all the advice guys. Glad you folks can keep me on track and from making dumb mistakes.
I do have my system at 4ghz now. I also installed W8 to an SSD to give that a whirl. There is a big difference there. I moved my games over to my HDD for the time being and popped w8 on my ssd instead. Its a big difference in some games like DayZ. Not sure if its just w8 stuff but my video seems alot smoother as well.

[Dazastar]

Intel to AMD - NOOOOOO!!!!!!

I did it and regrets came flooding in. I had a sweet little i7 860. Then purchased what I thought would be an awesome upgrade to 8 cores with the FX. Instead I was shattered to see an abysmal slump in performance in every aspect.

Never again, now I have an i5 3450 - Got back my performance and more, it was a noticeable difference. Not to mention to that the AMD's have a noisy uber hi speed Fan to keep em stable.

[Generic User #2]

to be fair, the FX-8320 CAN game and it's a monster at transcoding (intel needs nearly 1.5x - 1.75x the budget to match encoding performance). It's just that it can only match intel at [very] best and not at a good value.

that is to say, if you bought one already, instead of just returning it, just try it out and you might realize that you can still get 65-75 FPS at 1200p BF3.