I5-3570 vs i5-3470 and a couple of graphics cards.

[icedburg3]

What would be the better option guys?

A. i5-3570 (non-K) + ZOTAC GTX 660 Ti AMP! Edition
B. i5-3470 + Asus Radeon HD 7950 DirectCU II TOP

 

[payturr]

I'm assuming you're not an overclocker, so -
A is good choice, but not ZOTAC for the graphics card. I've never been a ZOTAC guy cause they're that one company people have heard of but not in a 100% positive light. If you're gonna do 660ti, find one manufactured by EVGA, MSI or Gigabyte - really, for graphics, those companies and ASUS are the best.

 

[Scott_D_Bowen]

Zotac make some of the best 'Amp' series factory (warranty) overclocked cards.
Frankly I think the Gigabyte ones are more esthetically designed, but the Zotac's are quite common cards for enthusiast websites to review as many of them have a pre-overclock and a warranty on it to boot.

Read/Print this before making a decision:
- http://techreport.com/review/23981/radeon-hd-7950-vs-geforce-gtx-660-ti-revisited

The GTX660 Ti does well against the Radeon HD 7950, even with only 75% the VRAM bus width. Thanks to higher clocked memory it has similar enough bandwidth and appears to make rather good use of it.

http://www.hwcompare.com/13145/geforce-gtx-660-ti-vs-radeon-hd-7950/


I used to lean towards ATI far more than I have been recently, thanks to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 600 series (not the GT series or lower):
- http://techreport.com/review/23981/radeon-hd-7950-vs-geforce-gtx-660-ti-revisited/6
- The other titles are likely to be more balanced, it's just depressing that AMD/ATI doesn't handle FP16 texels well.

 

[icedburg3]

With option A, I'm considering getting Zotac AMP! Edition or MSI Power Edition. Benchmarks show that MSI's 660 Ti gives 5 frames less than the AMP! Edition. Zotac's 660 Ti is always at the second spot next to Gigabyte. Unfortunately, I cannot get a Gigabyte card at the moment when I will buy components. So... is it AMP! or Power?

 

[icedburg3]

Hmmm... many people say too that HD 7950 would really show its power in the following years when the new drivers will be released. That's the reason why I'm really confused.