I figured the bump on the 580 to 3GB would still match or nearly match the new HD 7970. At $50 cheaper it sounds neat, but it wont arrive until mid January. Besides, being a pcie 3.0 card and the first of its kind, and a first of its generation, I don't trust a new build to it entirely yet. Also with the beta sign ups starting today, beta is probably next month too, and I thinking it's nearly time to build. I bought my cpu today.
I also switched out the 2TB Seagate for a 120GB SSD for two reasons:
1. seagate sucks. really it does. I've had a Maxtor and WD drive last me 10 years on my old rig. A seagate I had lasted only 3 years.
2. in a weird turn of events, it actually makes more sense now to buy ssds and wait until hdd prices go down to buy a new hdd, instead of the other way around. the flood in thailand that wiped out a good portion of the world's supply of internal hdds has nearly caused the prices of hdds to double. Granted the price per MB doesn't yet overshadow the price per MB of an hdd - but SSDs are way faster, and today's SSDs last just as long as hdds (more than 10 years which is my target). its a mixed blessing - i get an ssd sooner than i wanted, but i suffer on storage space. I do plan to eventually get a storage drive, but doesn't everyone? The 120 GB will last me until hdd prices start going down in 2013. In the meantime, I can hook up an external hdd for the same price as an internal (since apparently only internal hdd prices are affected by thailand flood), or even just buy a cheap ide/sata adapter around $20 and hook up my old drives until then!
So with the updated change from a 2TB hdd to a 120GB ssd, it actually knocks $10 off the totals.
