7950 would prolly be the better video lol, 7870 isn't very strong IMO.

The truth is, according to john carmack consoles can perform better than PCs with similar performance by up to 50-100%. (I can't find the quote). That's why I think a 7870 build won't compete well.

But you don't have to pay for multiplayer on this PC, and you pay much less for games.

That's old by now though, MS has improved DX after that, 11 is actually quiet a lot better compared to 9, 10.1 also did a decent boost, and Windows 8.... although I hate to say it, is faster than Windows 7, and I'll convert eventually just for that after I'm more used to 8 on my new laptop.... It's nowhere near assembly level but they generally get better with newer DX versions and driver updates, and also why I miss DOS on that regard.....

PS: I don't think 7870 would compete well at all as well, unless you are talking about the XT edition, which has less RAM....

Carmack said that for this new gen... in 2011.

That was a response about the AMD saying the GPUs will perform far better without DirectX like in consoles.

That's like 2 years ago when devs were still mostly doing work with DX9 level graphics though. Most of the devs that bitched at the time were always bitching about DX9 because it does perform kinda bad in Windows, MS finally got the fucking message at least and is improving the overall.

No. The full story started when AMD said MS needs to drop the DX (DX11 not the DX9) to have a far better performance in their GPUs like consoles. Carmack said the consoles performs 2x the PC with same hardware not only due the API (DX) but because the optimizations for single specs too.

At the end you are comparing a abstraction API (DX) with some more close to metal (consoles)... that's what AMD wants to say.

And DX11 give less freedom to developers than DX9... it is really attached to OS... DX9 not so much... in this aspect devs like more the DX9 style.

Cool, my build's Win 8. I've gotten used to it. I think the backlash was exaggerated a bit. its not that bad

This is what happened in 2011.

AMD: DirectX Holding Back Graphics Performance On PC 

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/123987/AMD_DirectX_Holding_Back_Graphics_Performance_On_PC.php

And yeah... the flexibility that any API like DirectX give to you, where you can make a code to run in almost every PC configuration in the world have a price to be paid... the price is the overhead created by these APIs... if you make a API that access directly the hardware (a fixed hardware and not all the hardware available in the maket) it will performance far better than DirectX but it will be locked to only unique hardware.

That will never change... Windows/Linux/Mac and DirectX/OpenGL/etc hold the graphcis performance on PCs.

Every developer agree with AMD.

Some quotes from AMD...

"It's funny, we often have at least ten times as much horsepower as an Xbox 360 or a PS3 in a high-end graphics card, yet it's very clear that the games don't look ten times as good," he said. "To a significant extent, that's because, one way or another, for good reasons and bad -- mostly good -- DirectX is getting in the way."

"Wrapping it up in a software layer gives you safety and security," Huddy said, "but it unfortunately tends to rob you of quite a lot of the performance, and most importantly it robs you of the opportunity to innovate."

"If we drop the API, then people really can render everything they can imagine, not what they can see -- and we'll probably see more visual innovation in that kind of situation," he said.