The Cohhilition

jagerman1980, you have very valid points, but for what Lowco will be doing, which is more than just gaming, an i7 would benefit over an i5, and for gaming purposes a 780 will be sufficient

Yeah a 780 is probably sufficient especially when getting the best bang for your buck. I have no clue if the i7 will benefit her, I just know most games the i5 is all you really need. I personally run an AMD processor because of the significant cost savings, but a budget of 2k I would go with intel. I also didn't mention but the only mouse I like for gaming is the Razer Naga and I only can use half the buttons on the side, but for MMOs the buttons make doing skills so much more efficient for me.

the reason it dropped was that nvidia dropped nearly all their high-end cards by 150$ in january to match the really cheap amd cards thats why it has dropped and i dont think it will drop much more. But none of us have the abillity to see in the future so we will jsut have to wait and see.

jagerman1980 wrote:I personally run an AMD processor because of the significant cost savings, but a budget of 2k I would go with intel.

What cost savings are these? Right now here in Denmark an AMD 8350 costs ~1299DKKR or ~USD $241.35. An Intel i5-4670K is DKKR 1619 or $301.
So.. that's ~$60 here in Denmark, the US prices are apparently pretty similar (around $200). While $60 isn't nothing, when you're talking $500 GPU's.. then it kindda pales.

On the performance part, I don't want to start an AMD vs Intel war here - I will just link this : http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php ... cmp[]=1780

You see that the AMD CPU overall is ~16% better when all cores are used, but if you compare the individual core capablity the Intel beats AMD by almost 50%.

For most games out now, they rarely use more than 2 cores/threads for the game itself. Then the OS can load up tasks for 1-2 cores/threads.. Hopefully with the shift to Mantle/DirectX12 (around mid'15) games will take more advantage of more cores, but atm this is not the case. Some games use CPU more than others - BF4/MMO's use a LOT of CPU, others are more dependant on GPU for performance.

ashardis i dont know but in sweden there is about 600 sek in cost differnce which is about 100$ and if you only have about 800$ budget 100$ is quite much plus the motherboards are also cheaper.

the i7 processor is unique and possesses the ability to split its 4 cores in 4 individual quad core processors. which would be better suited for a stream/ gaming build. (which is why most streamers opt for it in their builds over a i5) i personally have an i5 because i only game, not stream. also i switched from amd to intel last month because they run cooler and quieter. for lowco's build i believe the i7 is worth the extra $ over a slightly better graphics card. the GTX780 is a phenomenal card and like others said the Ti is not worth the extra ~$200 since we could see another price drop in the near future

Thank you SO much for all the help guys! Seriously, could not do this without everyone's input. I am going to be ordering the parts very soon! And yes I need the computer to handle gaming + streaming. My budget is not a fine trimmed $2k, meaning if there is something that would improve performance but pushes it a bit over $2k I am willing to go past it.