Current Rig (X58 Based):

Asus P6T Motherboard (SATA II, PCIe 2.0)

Core i7 920 (D0 revision) @ 4.1GHz, HT enabled, cooled by Cooler Master V8

12GB 1600 Corsair Vengance RAM

Single MSI Twin Frozr II 2GB HD 6950 flashed to HD 6970

Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB

Cooler Master HAF 912

OR

Possible New Build (Z77 Based):

Asus P9Z77-V PRO Motherboard (SATA III, PCIe 3.0)

Core i5 3570K, cooled by Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO

8GB 1600 Kingston HyperX RAM

Single EVGA FTW Edition 2GB GTX 670

Intel 330 120 GB SSD for Boot

Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB

Cooler Master HAF XM

OR

Upgrade Current Rig With:

Single EVGA FTW Edition 2GB GTX 670

PCIe SATA III Controller (don't know what brand yet) for the SSD since my mobo is limited to SATA II

Intel 330 120 GB SSD for Boot, maybe 520

KEEP EVERYTHING ELSE THE SAME

ALSO

My question is: Are SATA III, PCIe 3.0, and the i5 Ivy Bridge worth the upgrade compared to my old X58 build? Is my i7 920 considered a bottleneck now?

Ideal Experience: Max in-game graphical settings including tessellation with 60fps or greater @ 1920x1080 for the following games:

Crysis Series (1, Warhead, 2, and upcoming 3)

Battlefield 3

The Witcher 2

Metro 2033

Batman: Arkham City

Saint's Row The Third

With my current build, I only average between 25 to 45fps for those games maxed out. All my other games like Skyrim and Diablo III already run great, however.

Should I wait if I were to upgrade the mobo and cpu? I've read that Ivy Bridge cpus run hot and the next generation might come out in 2013 (as well as geforce 700 cards)

Honestly, unless you just have cash to burn, I would just do the upgrade not the new build.

Upgrade definitely, an i7 920 at that speed is absolutely awesome (nice job on that), i5s are only quad core and not hyperthreaded, so you only will see 4 cores in your machine, where with that i7 each core is basically doubled because of the HT so you are still well better off keeping your cpu, your ram is more then enough for anything right now so no need to change that either, you DO have a bottleneck, and thats your harddrive, i would DEFINITELY replace that, blue drives are only meant for multimedia and storage, thats it, when it comes to gaming its simply not good enough, a standard 7200RPM is faster. Your graphics card choice is excellent also for the upgrade, your basically getting a 680 for like 50$ cheaper or more if your in the u.s :D

Simply changing the harddrive and the gfx card would be all you'd need to do to max everything out man... No need for a complete new system, but thats my opinion.

Aw man, you picked the really challenging games to want to run at max. Good luck with running TW2 with Ubersampling enabled.

Whatever you end up doing, make sure your PSU is up to the task.

i have almost exactly the system you're describing as the 'new build', and its awesome! BUT I would just upgrade your video card and get an SSD as others are saying.. but would not bother with the sata3 controller, they will be bottlenecked by your pci-e slots anyway, i doubt you'd see much of a performance jump vs your sata2 ports... but maybe in another year or so you can get a new motherboard and then the ssd will still be useful!

also, I have the cheapest possible gtx 670 (PNY), and its still totally great, so if you're looking to save a bit of money don't hestiate to do that vs your top of the line 670 you've chosen.

from the sound of it, seems like he knows what hes doing when it comes to building and PSU stuff just going by what he has in his current case.

Since i'm leaning towards an upgrade, would the Intel 520 SSD ($30 more) be any better than the 330? So the SATA III controller upgrade won't do much?

The EVGA GTX 670 FTW Edition is on sale for the price of a reference card

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-Dual-Link-DisplayPort-Graphics-02G-P4-2678-KR/dp/B0083Y6MV6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343247086&sr=8-1&keywords=evga+gtx+670ftw

My current power supply is a Corsair 750TX from 2009 which is still going strong. My new build's PSU would most likely be a Seasonic 1050 Watt 80 Plus Gold (Apparently Seasonic is underrated, and Corsair uses the same parts for a higher premium)

Man, that current rig sounds hardly due for an upgrade! Lemme post my baller specs:

2.40 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core!

1.5 gigs of DDR2 RAM (AKA MY BURNERS, RIGHT!?)!

5-HUNJED gigs of BANGIN' storage space!

NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT (YOU SEE ME?)!

YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT IT IS

@Trav said:

Man, that current rig sounds hardly due for an upgrade! Lemme post my baller specs:

2.40 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core!

1.5 gigs of DDR2 RAM (AKA MY BURNERS, RIGHT!?)!

5-HUNJED gigs of BANGIN' storage space!

NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT (YOU SEE ME?)!

YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT IT IS

Bitchin future-proofed 'puter there bro. Sounds like you can run Half Life 2 with almost no hiccups.

@mtcantor said:

@Trav said:

Man, that current rig sounds hardly due for an upgrade! Lemme post my baller specs:

2.40 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core!

1.5 gigs of DDR2 RAM (AKA MY BURNERS, RIGHT!?)!

5-HUNJED gigs of BANGIN' storage space!

NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT (YOU SEE ME?)!

YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT IT IS

Bitchin future-proofed 'puter there bro. Sounds like you can run Half Life 2 with almost no hiccups.

At near-low settings. I'm surprised this guy has time for games, what with all the money he's able to throw around on hardware ;P

@Ravenlight said:

@mtcantor said:

@Trav said:

Man, that current rig sounds hardly due for an upgrade! Lemme post my baller specs:

2.40 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core!

1.5 gigs of DDR2 RAM (AKA MY BURNERS, RIGHT!?)!

5-HUNJED gigs of BANGIN' storage space!

NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT (YOU SEE ME?)!

YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT IT IS

Bitchin future-proofed 'puter there bro. Sounds like you can run Half Life 2 with almost no hiccups.

At near-low settings. I'm surprised this guy has time for games, what with all the money he's able to throw around on hardware ;P

I'm honestly surprised that he isn't rocking a 3DFX card in that bad boy.

I always recommend starting a new machine instead of rebuilding and old one if you can afford it. If nothing else you end up with two functional machines which you can use the older one as a fallback or gift it to someone where trying to tinker with just one older machine may result in a costly series of purchases and a disabled machine in the meanwhile.

@mtcantor said:

@Ravenlight said:

@mtcantor said:

@Trav said:

Man, that current rig sounds hardly due for an upgrade! Lemme post my baller specs:

2.40 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core!

1.5 gigs of DDR2 RAM (AKA MY BURNERS, RIGHT!?)!

5-HUNJED gigs of BANGIN' storage space!

NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT (YOU SEE ME?)!

YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT IT IS

Bitchin future-proofed 'puter there bro. Sounds like you can run Half Life 2 with almost no hiccups.

At near-low settings. I'm surprised this guy has time for games, what with all the money he's able to throw around on hardware ;P

I'm honestly surprised that he isn't rocking a 3DFX card in that bad boy.

I CAN run HL2 with almost no hiccups at low-level settings, thank you very much! It only takes a couple minutes to boot up, too. Not counting the time it takes for Steam to open. Or the lock-up audio stutters when the game is first launched.

Although my computer has solved Steam sales for me. I spent $2.50 to buy KOTOR, because that's all I can run. ur jelly i cn tell

Umm I wouldn't even say you need to upgrade. A GTX 670 is practically the same tier gpu as your existing one. As for maxing out those game and getting a comfortable 50-60, that's not going to happen unless you want to buy 2 GTX 680s(and that's not even a guarantee). Especially The Witcher 2 and Metro 2033,

Whatever is cheaper.

@defaulttag said:

My question is: Are SATA III, PCIe 3.0, and the i5 Ivy Bridge worth the upgrade compared to my old X58 build? Is my i7 920 considered a bottleneck now?

Ideal Experience: Max in-game graphical settings including tessellation with 60fps or greater @ 1920x1080 for the following games:

Crysis Series (1, Warhead, 2, and upcoming 3)

Battlefield 3

The Witcher 2

Metro 2033

Batman: Arkham City

Saint's Row The Third

With my current build, I only average between 25 to 45fps for those games maxed out. All my other games like Skyrim and Diablo III already run great, however.

Should I wait if I were to upgrade the mobo and cpu? I've read that Ivy Bridge cpus run hot and the next generation might come out in 2013 (as well as geforce 700 cards)

saints row 3 has some kind of problem utilizing certain systems, so im not sure you are going to be able to muscle your way up to 60, some people run it fine, some people have trouble ( but they might have fixed that issue by now, im not sure )

a 670 should be able to make BF3 run at around 60.

regarding crysis, the first and warhead are kind of tough to run, but since crytek chickened out and went to consoles for the second one, thats very easy to run, disregarding the absolutley idiotic usage of tesselation in that game. i'm willing to bet that the third will be no different. ( you should be able to run the 2nd one fine with your current setup. )

I'm not sure anything out there ( as far as single card solutions go ) can run the witcher 2 gracefully if you enable the crazy setting ( supersampling ) batman shouldnt be a problem on your current rig either, as long as you dont have hardware physx's on, obviously.

if you are dead set at buying something now, just get the graphics card and the ssd, ( not neccessarily the sata 3 controller )

then if you still think your computer is underperforming in games, go ahead and by that ivy bridge.

although the 920 should be good enough for 60 in those titles.