Widescreen Gaming Forum

In the near future when my tax refund comes in, I want to upgrade my current 3xL Gaming PC with a new 3xL Gaming PC. I made my old one 3 years ago and I think it's time for an upgrade.

My CURRENT specs are as follows (some of it obviously not available anymore):
Monitors(3): 3xViewSonic VX2450WM (DVI Input, No DP)
Case: COOLER MASTER HAF 932 Advanced RC-932-KKN5-GP Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case with USB 3.0
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower XT 875
Processor: Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor (OC'ed to 3.6Ghz)
Motherboard: ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard
Memory: OCZ Platinum 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Low Voltage Desktop Memory Model OCZ3P1600LV6GK
Video:XFX HD-587A-ZNF9 Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card w/ATI Eyefinity
Sound Card: Creative 70SB073A00000 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
Optical Drive: LG Black 6X BD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 40X CD-ROM SATA Internal Blu-ray/HD DVD-ROM & 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Model GGC-H20L
Hard Drive(Windows + Select Games): OCZ Vertex 3 Series - MAX IOPS Edition VTX3MI-25SAT3-120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Hard Drive(Data + Other Games): Seagate Barracuda ES ST3750640NS 750GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive

I'm thinking my monitors, case, power supply, sound card, optical drive, power supply, and hard drives are good enough as is to support a new build. (please tell me if you guys think otherwise)
I'm looking for recommendations on a good close to top/top end system that will last me another few years to come. My games of choice for now are SW:TOR, Skyrim, and Battlefield 3. I expect to play games of a similar ilk in the future.
I've recently become a father and I haven't been keeping up with the latest hardware news, so hopefully I can get some help from you. :)

I want to play in Eyefinity 5760x1080 with at least 60fps with at least some AA enabled at least. Right now I can get Skyrim to run at 25-30fps outdoors and 60fps indoors all modded out... but with no AA. I want to get that up and enable some AA if possible.

Thanks,
Neovalen

I would get a 2500K CPU, a suitable Z68 motherboard (with slots for 2 cards, and with slots to accommodate your soundcard a well, so the gpus don't block it), 8 or 16GB of RAM (RAM is cheap) DDR3 1600Mhz or more, I would probably get a 7970 GPU, or a 7950 in crossfire, or a GTX570 or 580 given my money. I would also consider replacing your PSU dependant on its age, as the capacitors age you generally lose output capacity on it.

IMO you could overclock your current CPU more than it already is, maybe invest in some aftermarket cooling, and get a pair of 7950/70, 6970 or GTX570/580s. You ideally want the 3GB 580's and the 2.5GB 570s, and other than that, the 2GB cards. There is not a lot of difference in gaming between Bloomfield, Sandy Bridge and Sandy Bridge E chips, and you already have a quad core CPU. Your 6GB RAM is more than enough for gaming at the moment, as long as you have enough VRAM. I would personally swap the PSU to something new around 1000 watts, if you want something high end with leg room, an AX1200 would be perfect, and overkill for any system (save for 4 GPU dual CPU monsters).

However, you said high end!

The highest of the high end would be the new Sandy Bridge E chips, the 3930K looks a good buy, tag on 16GB RAM (quad channel 4GB/channel) and a suitable motherboard to that, and the above GPU recommendations. A lot of people notice microstutter, on my 5850 crossfire rig I only have really played TF2 and the framerate is so obscene I haven't ever seen any, so I can't say how bad it is but most people say SLI is better than crossfire for the reason of less microstutter, but YMMV.

My best advice would be to say upgrade the GPUs and keep your current system, you won't notice any difference for gaming, but do what you want!

And whilst you are at it, that X-fi card you have is poor, it doesn't have any hardware accelerated features/ DSP etc, it offloads everything to the CPU. You could do a lot worse than use an X-Fi titanium, or maybe some other card, if you are concerned about the absolute best performance.

I would only upgrade you gpu and leave the rest of you system alone. Most modern games are gpu bound especially in triple screen resolution. Which means that you don't need to upgrade you cpu just yet. Wait another 1.5-2 years and upgrade most of you system then. I cannot recommend either SLI(2x580 3gb) or Crossfire(2x79xx) because of microstuttering problems. Maybe buy 2 79xx’s (do some testing) and return one of them if you are bothered by stuttering too much.

Thank you guys for your inputs, you've given me a bit to think about. :)

Like Gilly and Wijkert said. Best solution would be to buy a New GPU. If you need it right now HD7970/50 or 3gb GTX580 are good Cards (though you'd need 580 SLI) but i don't think you're satisfied with a Single 7970 as you said Top/High end System.

Changing to a 2700K /3820 or stuff would be a joke. You wouldn' get more than 10% performance increase. The main benefit of a 2600k is the better Turbo which goes higher.
So did you ever consider Watercooling? 3.6ghz should be enough for most Games. But maybe you could reach 4ghz with Water. If you realy want to upgrade CPU go with a 3930K or wait for Ivy Bridge. And when we're Talking about waiting.. In the next 2-5 Months Nvidia is supposed to launch their New GPU's . Maybe you want to wait if you dislike AMD GPU's.

I have considered water cooling, but honestly would have NO IDEA how to set it up in my case. I'm a rather advanced user on air cooling but my 920 chip (I must have got a bad stepping) I got couldn't get above 3.6 on my Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme CPU Heatsink using a good single fan with it.

I was thinking a 7970 might be a good choice, possibly 2 of them. However my motherboard is PCI-E 2.0... the 7970 are designed for 3.0 are they not? Also my SSD is SATA3 and the mobo is SATA2...
Problem then is, if I upgrade the mobo, why not upgrade the processor? and so on.... thats been my problem looking at it myself...

I prefer ATI because it's a hardware solution for eyefinity(and it seems one of thier focus points) rather than seeming like a secondary add-on like the Nvidia solution, tho the Nvidia cards seem to support more driver features/support.

I'd probably wait a month (or two) and get a Z77 motherboard, an i7 3770K, som RAM, and a GK104 if it beats the 7970. That's my plan at least ;)

Regarding PCI-E 3.0; there's no difference with a single GPU. You'll have to read up on it if you're going cross- (or more) fire though. Here's an anandtech article that explains the bandwidth restrictions.

Regarding nvidia and multi-monitor setups on single-GPU's; the coming gen will support it natively.

I'd just worry about the GPU for now. Or the monitors as well - monitors outlast every other bit of my system several times over, they're easily the part I'm least likely to penny-pinch on, closely followed by PSU and keyboard/mouse.

Wait for Ivy Bridge, or possibly Piledriver.