$1,300, looking for help with a build _NEW BUILD_

[alex15963]

Approximate Purchase Date: e.g.: this week

Budget Range: 1300 After Shipping

System Usage from Most to Least Important: gaming

Are you buying a monitor: No

Do you need to buy OS: No

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: no preference

Location: City, State/Region, Country - plantation florida

Parts Preferences: Nvidia graphics / intel cpu

Overclocking: no

SLI or Crossfire: no

Your Monitor Resolution: 1920 x 1080

Additional Comments: just really good for gaming

 

[Infall]

980 TI is not a waste of money bigger ram and bigger disks and stuff like that is a waste of money. In a year he is gonna need that 980ti in 2 years from now the same if 980 ti will hold its gorun on ultra for 2 years 980 will do it for 1,5 years etc etc if he wants to keep this pc for 4-5 years 980 will let him unsupported in 4 years while 980 ti will keep until 5th one. While 500mhz on ram or more gigs will not help him at all.

 

[atheus]

980 TI is not a waste of money bigger ram and bigger disks and stuff like that is a waste of money. In a year he is gonna need that 980ti in 2 years from now the same if 980 ti will hold its gorun on ultra for 2 years 980 will do it for 1,5 years etc etc if he wants to keep this pc for 4-5 years 980 will let him unsupported in 4 years while 980 ti will keep until 5th one. While 500mhz on ram or more gigs will not help him at all.

Suppose that instead of 980 Ti he buys a 970 for half the price. In his pocket remains $325 that he didn't spend on the 980 Ti. The 970 works just fine for the next year, but in the spring next year he has the option to spend that $325 on a Pascal card. Pascal may be phenomenally faster than Maxwell. nVidia claims it will be 10x faster for CUDA. I would definitely want to have an extra $325 sitting around for computer parts when Pascal comes out. Who knows what they'll have out the year after that.

The point is it doesn't make a lot of sense reaching for a $650 card today when a $300 card does the job perfectly well. The performance per dollar takes a massive nose dive after the 970, so if you don't need it, don't buy it. If the future requires higher performance, it will be available in the future at a much better price point.

The one thing that could throw a wrench in my works is Oculus, which is not 1080p/60. I think I recall them saying that the 970 will be their minimum requirement, and that the limiting factor of VR today is the power of graphics cards. We'll find out later whether the 970 is entirely satisfactory for Oculus, but within a few months of Oculus release we'll have Pascal release, so I think that 970 is still the correct choice for a 1080p gamer.

One last thought that I'll just edit in about the 4th gen vs. 6th gen debate - going with Z170 has all the advantages I mentioned before, plus the option of being able to drop a 7th gen chip in there in (apparently) 2 years. Who knows what Cannon Lake will be like. Maybe it will be another 5%, but then again maybe it will be amazing. It's always nice to have options.