Getting a gaming rig. Buy or Build?

[Squilliam]

Garcian Smith said:

Squilliam said:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/vga-charts-december-2009/2

I would suggest you take a good look, especially taking note of the relative positions of the 5850 and 4890 in games where the graphs are steep as this indicates the game has a graphics bottleneck.

Also two things to take note of:

1. HD 5xxx series are DX11 which means more efficiency, better image quality etc.
2. HD 5xxx series support Eyefinity (you can use up to 6 monitors as if they are one panel) and display port for future connectivity.

That all depends upon what resolution the OP is running. For 1920x1080 or lower, the 4890 should be all he needs. 1920x1200 is a little more shaky, though.

And don't worry about DX11 now - at least, not when the only games that take advantage of the hardware only do so for minor things like tessellated flags. And-and, don't buy a DX11 card for Eyefinity or DisplayPort if you don't plan on using either.

Most people over-buy in the graphics card department initially and then get upset when their top-of-the-line hardware is outperformed by a $150 card two years down the road. Don't be one of those people.

Otherwise, OP: I'd reconsider the case (unless you want whatever room you're putting your PC in to glow blue), but the rest of the build looks fine. I would, however, check the RAM that you picked out against Gigabyte's compatibility list just to make sure, since the GA-P55 mobos are notoriously picky when it comes to RAM.

Compute shader! Its more than just an improvement in gaming, it also makes the GPU more useful in the short, mid and longer term for modeling as well. http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,689924/DirectX-11-Compute-Shader-Three-times-faster-than-DX101-due-to-Local-Data-Share/News/ + http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9f943b2b-53ea-4f80-84b2-f05a360bfc6a&displaylang=en Its also much more efficient than the Shader Model 4.1 GPUs. Its not just about over-buying, its also getting the required features now which will be used, and a DX11 class GPU is much more useful for someone doing modeling and gaming than a GPU which is just as powerful but limited to the DX10.1 feature-set.