That's pretty much my four-year-old PC and I didn't bother buying BF3 because I expected it to not work well enough.

I doubt it...I believe it's below the minimum spec. Maybe if you overclock it a little.

Fck, this is as annoying as ever to make the right call with these upgrades..

I think the old Socket 755 quad cores (Q6600 for example) will be fine for you and affordable. Those old dual cores are horrible for gaming.

there is no point of buying a dual core on quad core era anyway.
As for 4-year old machines, my quad-junk handles bf3 on high pretty well.

No that's my current machine, minus the 7770 which i would buy..

Is anyone in touch with trends and future techs.. How much faster and more cores could new CPU's have (the one's to come out as new consoles come out)?
Would AMD FX6100 (6 cores) be future proof, with only upgrading a graphics card then, in two or three years..

Quote from Boris Lozac :

Is anyone in touch with trends and future techs.. How much faster and more cores could new CPU's have (the one's to come out as new consoles come out)?
Would AMD FX6100 (6 cores) be future proof, with only upgrading a graphics card then, in two or three years..

Get a cheap ivy bridge, loads faster.

What is that sorry, CPU?

Compared to Sandy Bridge:
5% to 15% increase in CPU performance
http://www.maximumpc.com/best-of-the-best
Although I am not a fan of Intel.

The recommendations on that site are outdated, and pretty stupid on top of that..

3960X (granted it's tiiiiny bit faster, but DOUBLE the price) over 3930K for high end? 3820 over 3770K? 2500K over 3570K? So much derp.

Boris, I've recommended this for so many people on this forum, but I'll do it again, because it's just damn good for the money. Motherboard: Anything with Z77 chipset. CPU: i5-3570K. RAM: Your call.

Quote from Matrixi :

RAM: Your call.

more to the point ram hardly matters speed wise so any 2*4gig kit will do
the only important thing to look out for with ram these days is that you should buy low ones (no silly large coolers on them) or you might run into problems with the cpu cooler

How would this cpu fair in BF3, C.A.R.S etc... Athlon II X3 450 3.2GHz, in pair with Powercolor 6850 256bit.

as i'm aware AMD has some performance decreasing issues compared to intel motherboards. I've always decided to play safe and chose intel over amd.

Quote from Boris Lozac :

How would this cpu fair in BF3, C.A.R.S etc... Athlon II X3 450 3.2GHz, in pair with Powercolor 6850 256bit.

That graphics card should be OK, but I doubt that CPU will last long.

Going shopping these days, decided for Phenom 965, Powercolor 6850, 4gb Mushkin Blackline 1600mhz etc..
Thanks for the advices everybody...

Btw, are SSD drives something i should consider, is it enough only for Windows to be installed on it to notice the speed difference and all that.. Is it a reliable tech?

SSD do have performance better than normal HDD but its not justifiable performance/price wise, unless you are making one of those monster PC's.

Quote from Chupacabras84 :

SSD do have performance better than normal HDD but its not justifiable performance/price wise, unless you are making one of those monster PC's.

You must not have one I assume? Once you're used to OS booting in a few seconds and applications and games loading almost instantly I'd like to hear you say that again.

However, if you are on a tight budget I wouldn't consider them.

No I dont have one.
Performance in games is mostly GPU and CPU, just because you have SSD doesnt mean you will play games your PC couldn't handle before and considering the price of this thing its just not for average gamer.
Of course I don't deny SSD is better than HDD but if you want to play newer games you better spend this money on better GPU at least performance increase will be more noticeable.

Quote from Bose321 :

You must not have one I assume? Once you're used to OS booting in a few seconds and applications and games loading almost instantly I'd like to hear you say that again.

However, if you are on a tight budget I wouldn't consider them.

So you recommend getting one in couple of months? When you say games load almost instantly, does the game have to be installed on that SSD or it can be on a classic HDD.

Quote from Boris Lozac :

So you recommend getting one in couple of months? When you say games load almost instantly, does the game have to be installed on that SSD or it can be on a classic HDD.

Yes, if you want your programs or games to load faster, you want to put it on the SSD.

That being said, you can buy a 128 or 256 GB SSD that contains all of your programs and games, and then buy a larger 750 GB HDD for example, to store all of your pictures, movies, documents, etc.

Is it worth it? I say yes but there is a price to pay. For example, a 256 GB Crucial M4 costs about $220 here in the US. That's a lot of space to give up for the price, but I have a 750 GB portable HDD to store all the extra stuff I don't need to load fast.

However, seeing that you want more gaming performance, I would consider using that money on a better cpu/motherboard combo.

You don't really need a 128 or 256GB SSD just for your operating system and applications though. Even a 64GB (which cost only around ~70 euros) drive is plenty. And once you do go SSD on your system drive, you'll never go back to regular hard drives. Regardless of how fast your machine is otherwise.

Most games aren't optimised for SSD storage anyhow, there's only been a couple games where I noticed a definite advantage in loading times with SSD over HDD.

My recommendation, if you're tight on budget: 64GB SSD for windows and programs, HDD for games/videos/photos.

I've bought a SATA3 motherboard so i'll definately keep it in mind in the upcomimg months, for the prices and technology to settle down a bit.. Will all feature (in the next two years say) SSD's be SATA3?

Bought new hardware.. jesus christ this AMD Box cooler is FU&KING loud, nice one AMD.. My head hurts in disbelief of what noise this thing makes.

Replaced this stupid box cooler with CM TX3 Evo, so much quieter.
Played BF3 for about an hour today and some sound came out of the motherboard, like a scratching beep, can't explain it any better, like the cooler grinded of something for a second, but it's not a cooler, sounded like those motherboard warning beeps, but scratchy..
My warning in bios is set to go off above 70c, is it possible that it reached 70? In Windows is like 40 to 44. But like i said super hot in the room, i'm in underwear and all that..