New rig for 3D gaming
 

Just wanted to fish for opinions. Bear in mind that I am going for slight overkill with this build so pay no mind to the ram amounts. I have been stung in with my past three builds by "saving" money. Not going down that road as little as possible again. But I do need to be realistic as I am not rich heh.

Two things that concern me are memory speed, I do want a mild OC on air or water. I do want a ram speed that would enable a 1:1 ratio with the CPU after OC if that is still an issue these days. And the video card. With 3D enabled I am assuming the frame rates will be cut in half, so If a GTX670 will net me 80FPS average @1080p in BF3 I assume I am looking at 40FPS average with 3D enabled? Is the single 670 going to cut it or will SLi do the trick? Would I be better off going with a 680 instead?

At any rate, I've been shopping for parts on the egg and is by no means final. I probably will put a system together after Christmas. Might even hold out for Haswell, not sure. But here is the list so far. Please let me know what you think. Especially those with 3D experience (I have none). Thanks!

Edit: Oh, yes. I forgot to mention, I realize that I will be limited to 1080p with this setup. However cranking the visuals is a MUST for me. So uber leet texture packs 8xMSAA is what I am after. Might be expecting too much from a $400.00 card though. :blarg:

Case: Cooler Master Haf XB (man this might make a good Borg cube project)
CPU: i7 3770K
Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth Z77
Ram: Gskill Ripjaws Z Series DDR3 1866Mhz 9-9-9-24
PSU: Corsair AX760
Video Card: EVGA GTX 670 FTW 4GB
Monitor: ASUS VG278H

Price for everything incl. shipping and taxes is $2,140.20 I wouldn't like the price for this build to be much higher than this at first. I can add a video card and an SSD to it in the future.

No feedback? No one thinks I'm nuts? C'mon! :bleh:

Hmm, I'm not sure a 670 will cut it for 3Dvision at >40fps with all the eyecandy turned on. My 680 does 60-70fps in most titles at 1920x1200 will ALL the eyecandy turned on. Half that FPS for 3Dvision, and you're not quite at your 40fps even with a 680.

Nothing looks too out of wack (its's DDR 3 btw though :bleh:) so no your not nuts.

You will certainly want a second 4gig GTX 670 though if you want 60fps+ with 3D Vision on those games with high res texture packs or massive AA settings.
Few other things to consider as well:

• If you spare the space swap the XB with the HAF XM. The XB only has room for two 3.5 inch drives in its 2 front (non-lockable) hot swap bays, no internal HDD support otherwise. The HAF XM has better internal drive support + better cooling for your video cards and the same water cooling support for only 30 dollars more.
• Consider saving 100 dollars and going for a 3530K instead of the 3770K since this machine looks to be a gaming oriented. Most games don't make use of the 3770's 4 extra virtual (hyper threaded) cores so unless your going to be doing 3D rendering or video editing on the same machine the 3570K is a better overall value.
• Personally with a gaming build you won't see much (if any) of a frame rate increase with 1866 memory over going with 1600 memory. I would go with 16 gigs of 1600 DDR3 instead so you can put the extra money in to your video cards which are the parts that really matter in a gaming build.

By the way what do you mean by RAM speed that's a 1 to 1 ratio with the CPU? With K series CPU's the multiplier is 100% unlocked so you don't have to mess with the Base Clock (which in turn messes with your ram speeds) to overclock the K parts.

I fear your right, I cam almost smell the smoke from the money that leaves my wallet at lightening speed. :sad:

I'd really, really be interested in single and SLI numbers with 3D. As well as a game play smoothness opinion. sigh.

No, just wrong. :haha:

Yes, I was thinking of saving money by upgrading to SLI down the road. Tthe question for me is, until such time would I regret the 670. Should I have gotten the 680 instead? So many sites show an OC'ed 670 rivals a stock 680 anyway. It's just too bad no review sites off a very solid 3D vision performance chart. At least none that I have seen.

Thank-you very much for this advise!

Your absolutely right. On paper. However, I came across a forum post discussing this very topic the other day in which a person was having issues playing the game in 3D SLI. Single GPU wasn't as bad but apparently the game plus SLI really took advantage of the HT of the 3770K. It wasn't the clock speed difference, he tested for that. He also linked to a study by someone on the Anandtech forum who did a more in depth test and came to the same conclusion. 3D, especially with SLI appears to be a different beast altogether. I can't say for sure, but I'm thinking the added performance of the 3770K is helping to cover up issues or deficiencies with the tech.

I will post the link if I can find it again.

Problem is, like I said I can't find any real investigative reporting on 3D vision2 with the current crop of GPU's. So, as it stands, I figure I'll err on the side of caution and pony up the extra 100 clams. That's usually the nice thing about overkill, you can't say you came up short and regret it. Many times in the past I have suffered from cheapitis. :haha:

Yes, you are right! I am too used to manipulating my FSB's with my locked multies on my Core2 Duo and Quad 6600. Thank-you! Am I correct in assuming then that the ram has no effect on the overclockability of an unlocked CPU?

I heard somewhere though that increasing the FSB and decreasing the multiplyer was a superior way to OC. At least with the Core CPU's. I wouldn't know for sure because if I wanted anything above an average OC I had to take my NB into the stratosphere. :biggrin:

Thank-you very much for the feedback guy's! It helps a lot. I go through a barren wasteland of ignorance every upgrade cycle. I'm more a gamer than a hardware guru.

I would go for the 670 over the 680 because of the large price difference, and realistically it's not night and day difference. I would guess if you are really after smooth 3d you are going to need sli 670. 1600mhz ram is the way to go unless you get a deal on faster stuff.

Yeah, now AkG has me rethinking the monitor purchase. Going with the 2D (3D ready) HE version of this monitor. Higher resolution. And getting the 3D vision 2 kit separately down the road sounds like a good decision too. I think, especially with 3D that SLi is going to be mandatory no matter if I get a 670 or a 680 lol. Oooo boy.

Unless you want to drop in a GTX 690, SLI 670's is almost a given for "maxed settings" 3D gaming. As for the 680 its not worth the extra dollars even though I own one (no GTX 670 when I bought my 680 :bleh:). Also (and correct me if I'm wrong) unless you have a particular brand preference go for 2 MSI GTX 670 Power Editions since Nvidia locked down the voltages on the 600 series cards. MSI unlocks the voltages on the PE cards so more or less you will get better overclocks overall on PE edition cards.

No Problem. Also If your considering custom water cooling in the future go for the HAF X. The X has more room between the Mobo and the top fan mounts then the XM so you can mount a wider variety of Rads in the top.

Fair enough and I guess it has the added benefit of having extra untapped horsepower for the future.

As long as you don't load up all the DIMMS your fine. Loading up all the DIMMS generally lowers the max overclock you can get from the CPU.

That doesn't apply to Core i series CPU's the FSB is gone. Crank up the CPU multiplier and when needed turn up the core voltage as well and you will be just fine getting a great overclock out of your 3770k, just make sure you have a great cooler to go along with it. I personally like all in one liquid coolers like the H80i and H100i over the big tower air coolers for this since your not mounting a 1kg block of metal and fans on your CPU and CPU socket with something like an H80i or H100i.

No problem. I my self don't change platforms very often (I plan to keep my i7 920 until (hopefully) LGA 2011's replacement arrives (Haswell-E ?)) but I like to keep an eye on whats new to keep me excited and just a little jealous :haha:.

not sure why this matters since z77 is multiplier only overclocking.