GTX 670 or HD 7970 on a low end CPU & RAM

[kalash156]

I've always upgraded my graphics cards to just "good enough" cards. So I finally decided to get a good card. I'm pretty much decided on either a GTX 670 or Radeon HD 7970 card. The thing is, I'm running a Sandy Bridge Core i3 (3.1 Ghz) CPU and 8 gigs of 1333 RAM. I know there's going to be some bottlenecking as far as frame rate, so my question is, how much of a frate rate drop should I expect? And which of the two cards would you recommend (or other cards withing the price range)?

I've settled between:
This Gigabyte GTX 670 Windforce
And this XFX Radeon HD 7970 Black Edition

A few points to note: I don't particularly care about PhysX, just wanna be able to play at max settings on most games with nice frame rate. I will be playing on a single 27-inch 1080p display. I might overclock the card if I need to, but if performance is there to begin with, I'll leave it stock. I will not be using the card for any professional video / graphics editing or modeling software. I wouldn't mind sacrificing a bit of performance for better cooling (hence why I'm interested in that Windforce card). My budget is around $450. Games I mostly play are: Skyrim (with a few graphics mods), Sleeping Dogs, Saints Row 3, Borderlands 2, Batman Arkham City, Far Cry 3, Civ 5, Anno 2070.

Other specs are:
Motherboard: ASrock Z75 Pro3.
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 675 watt.
Storage: Samsung 840 Series SSD (system) & 1 TB HDD (media)
Current graphics card: Saphire Radeon HD 6770 (overclocked to Core = 960; Mem = 1330)

I'll probably upgrade my RAM in the coming weeks. Maybe 8 or 16 gigs of 1866. I figured I'd wait to see what Intel has in store with their Haswell CPU's. Don't really feel that I need to upgrade since all I use my PC for is web browsing and gaming. I know Intel is primarily focused on laptops with Haswell, but I think they said that new line of desktop CPU's will be out by the end of the year. Correct me if I'm wrong on that one.

Any suggestions or recommendations are appreciated

 

[bigshootr8]

nice nice I thought so

 

[cgner]

great thing about pc gaming is you can change settings and make it work for you.

I have been trying to beat that into console noobs' heads for years now.

 

[bigshootr8]

don't worry let them play there consoles on there baby controllers haha jp

 

[cgner]

Their one and only excuse for everything is "oh but console is cheaper." Its cheaper to buy, but count in that $2000 TV, xbox live over 5 years, and money spent on games VS steam sales. Like i said, noobs.

 

[bigshootr8]

It is cheaper but I'll tell you though with steam boxes coming I don't know I would rather have a wireless keyboard and mouse and sit in front of my TV playing a game. Steam sales are AWWWWWEEESSSSSSOOOOMMMMMME!

 

[cgner]

Steam kicks so much аss, its hard to even put it in perspective. With THQ bankrupted and EA being the soulless money grabbing monstrosity that spews out mediocrity all day, Activision milking COD fanboys, Valve is the last best hope of Humanity.....