$2000 (Rs. 100,000) Computer for Gaming / Video Encoding

Hey Guys,

I have been reading a lot on tom's hardware lately and found it to be profusely addictive and compelling.
And therefore couldn't resist registering though for personal help! . I would still help the community as much as i can!

So anyways, i am planning to build a new rig and its mainly going to be for gaming and video encoding (x264/divx/xvid).
I was wondering if the new AMD Bulldozers with the six/eight cores are worth the money considering the hexa-core intels are priced almost double that of the AMD, but the benchmarks speaks for the price difference.

My current concern is the CPU, i have had everything else figured out.

This would basically be my rig sans CPU:

• Asus P9X79 Pro / Asus Sabertooth 990FX AM3+
• MSI 6950 2GB TWIN FROZR III POWER EDITION (Future TriFire w/ 6990)
• 4 x Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3-1600
• Boot Disk : OCZ Petrol PTL1-25SAT3 - 64GB
• Secondary Storage : Seagate Barracuda 7200Rpm - 1TB
• PSU : Corsair Enthusiast Series TX850
• Stock Cooling for now.

Now, what i want suggestion for is the CPU, should i save the money and get FX-8150 or i7-2600k or even the i5-2500k and get a 6990/GTX 590 instead of 6950. Or is it recommended to wait for the ivy bridge? Plus i also wanted to know the upgrade/downgrade path i would have with the X79 chipset?

Regards,
Kalpak Khemka.

I would go for the i7-2600k if you do a lot of encoding, if you don't do that much I'd go for the i5-2500k. The FX-8 CPU's are a bit of a let down and won't be great in games while the socket 2011 CPU's are just way too expensive for what they do.

For your graphics card I would go with the HD 7950 or HD 7970 depending which you can afford. A lot of people are saying they're too expensive but the HD 7950 outperforms the GTX 580 and it's around the same price. It also consumes a lot less power than the 580.

@Tava_nova : I have that much money doesn't mean i blow it up unnecessarily. . if i gained over 10x raw power by buying a 3930k over i7-2600k, i might consider it as an option, but i have seen quite a few benchmarks, there's hardly any real time difference. a difference of 5-10mins is very nominal to me. Plus i would rather buy 7950 over 570? But nvidia has dvdfab for GPU accelerated video encoding and ati avivo sucks at the moment, so i'm slightly bent on that. maybe wait for 6xx series? I'm not biased about lga 2011, i'm just worried about upgrade path. as i've read ivy bridge will work on lga 1155.

@jmsellars1 : i am with you on fx-8 series. the x6 1100 comes in pretty close to it. had they reduced the die size like intel is doing for ivy bridge (22nm, are you kidding me now?). the graphic card, as i stated earlier, i cant see and hardware accelerated softwares for ati. otherwise i just love ati. if i can find a software that accelerates the ATI gpu, i'm sold on 7950!