Well firstly Nvidia is slightly more energy efficient right now.

And second AMD is only even because the sites are using the wrong methodology: http://techreport.com/review/23981/radeon-hd-7950-vs-geforce-gtx-660-ti-revisited/11

Personally I'd rather have visible smoothness than a higher FPS number.

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adriane23, what games are you looking to play that you can't right now, and at what resolution?

I know that example. In the same game there is significant differences and other maps show the reverse. It is hardly a scientific study.

That figure is an average across multiple games, what do you mean by "maps"?

Some maps show nVidia as having terrible latency spikes and others show AMD. It depends on the map so you can hardly call that conclusive.

Across all games though? Link to alternative review showing Nvidia spikes?

I will trust TR until something equally thorough shows up.

Tarumon said:
Look at the motherboard, if it had enough slots, an econimical and fun way to boost performance is to buy high end last gen @ today's price, and just buy two of them.

Not any more, since vid cards have hardly gone down in price. You could buy a 4850 for $99 in 2009; the 7750 which is not much faster is still more than that.

If your personality is such that once you start you will keep plowing though, then buy the most expensive current gen instead. You will still crossfire or SLI the thing later.

Crossfire and SLI improve FPS on paper only. Image quality goes down due to microstutter and there remain issues with driver support.

Solid State Drives (there is Deal of the Day 256gb Sata 3 SSD for just $165ish now), same thing here, can buy two or more or just one. You will notice a huge performance boost here.

Not in games.

RAM wise, more isnt necessarily better, you want the fastest, widest bandwidth and the optimum number. Gateway's slow 8gb is actually a performance drain. You only notice it's benefits if you do a lot of cutting and pasting of video for example. But for gaming, frames per second, low latency, fast throughput, etc, it's like running a high horse power bus on track.

RAM specs hardly make a difference. Maybe 1-2% between what he has now and some super expensive low latency RAM.

Gateway motherboards are NOT the same as their retail counterparts, distinguishable only via a small part number difference. But that is a deal killer too. You won't be able to modify many settings via BIOS, due to Gateway essentially locking it down and providing zero customer support. OEM also will no support any BIOS updates.

Why would you want to modify that stuff if you're not OCing or upgrading the CPU? It's perfectly fine as is, good CPU performance.

So if you change PSU, GPU, ram, new 120 hertz HD monitor, SSD....your throughput will be worth less than the sum of the parts - because the CPU sits on an inefficient architecture, mated to slow ram, and motherboard simply won't allow you the same upgrades.

No hard stats there. "Inefficient"? If the CPU and GPU are fast and you have enough RAM the rest of the system hardly matters. Again maybe 1-2% difference, nothing compared to spending that money on a GPU upgrade.

So if you want to start down this path, I highly highly highly recommend you start from scratch. Gateways are not meant for upgrades. They are value systems for everyday use. I havent done it in a while but I wouldnt be surprised if your motherboard doesnt support Sata 3. Building a PC in and of itself is fun. Even if at the end you play no games on it. But it can also be very frustrating and money wasting if you tried to turn a Corolla into a Porsche.

For you, maybe. This guy wants to play games, and the easiest way for him to do that is to replace as little as possible.