When I initially had the computer built for me at "I BUY POWER" ( poor eyesight ) I originally had a GTX 260 as it was all I could afford at the time ( I had planned an upgrade when the money became available )

Now the GTX260 had 896MB of DDR3 and I must admit I saw the Jaggies from my Trackir when I moved my head too Fast. But with the GTX480 it has 1536MB of DDR5 and the Jaggies are Definatly a thing of the Past

Now my question is why go for a 560 or better when it's not needed, aside from a cost saving, the size of the PSU required to maintain a safety margin is much Less ?

There are so few times that "More is Not Needed"

This seems to be one of those times

Lothar and Uncleal,

Thank you very much for your responses and advice. I will be making a change to a 800W Modular PSU. My budget is $1200 built and can afford to add a top of the line Video card. The 560 TI was highly recommended for both graphics and longevity. I am not a seasoned IT guy, so any input is greatly appreciated.

Thank you for the kind words! I have a WWI submarine mod in progress for SHIV (Wolves of the Kaiser), and this got me back into WWI aviation.

Thanks to everyone else for the advice, especially about processors. I'll also probably go with an i5-3570K like Tailspinner because it's the cheapest Intel my builder offers that's easy to overclock.

I've been wondering if I can be a cheapskate with memory and get DDR3 1333 Mhz instead of 1600 Mhz?

Leaning towards not getting a SSD - I have many gigs of modding files and SSD's are just too costly per gigabyte of space. Hopefully a SATA-III will be good enough?

I hope anyone who is serious thinking of overclocking their CPU is seriously considering some HD cooling, AIR is fine but the silver past is essential

I don't hold with the SSD anyway, while many rave about it's speed. What's to stop running a small SSD, with a huge SATA

Why be a cheapskate on memory, just how much are you gonna save. I'd go with 2X 2big sticks of the 1600 upgrade later

It's kinda hard, maybe I'm confused. Much of my confusion is who if anyone is building this dream machine, you, a building house

Your considering skimping on the memory, and your 5850 stutters at times

Let's get down to cases. I was never an ATI fan, but many are, there are settings that Will eliminate the stutters totally, but Silent Hunter might suffer

You can't have your cake and eat it too. This sounds crazy I know, OFF runs smoother at higher resolution, I run at 1920 X 1080 and I only stopped there because I can't afford a 32"

Tailspinner: get the biggest monitor you can afford at TIGER.com a 24" goes under $200

My Wide 27" is the same resolution as the 24" 1920 X 1080. When I picked up the 27" over a 22" I was running a Quad@ only2.4Ghtz gained 8 FPS, Which don't sound like much but 24 to 32 is one helluva jump

Video Card was 8600GT w/ 512DDR3 Top of the heap for an older unit. FPS is easily obtainable in OFF by pressing ( Z ) anytime. Not to toot my own horn. .BUT. Go to the Sticky OFF Tips and Hints. . Page 4

When you see my name start reading . . Bring a Sandwich

You can...
I also have an ATI 5850 and I use the tuning of graphic settings for ATI cards as advised by other OFF users in the forums. I run 1920 x 1080 on a 27" monitor and have a steady 29 / 30 framerate (I limited to 30, more doesn't make any difference) without stutters.
I can confirm at the same time my Silent Hunter III keeps running at same 1920 x 1080 resolution between average 60 fps (Living SH3 mod) and over 100 fps (NYGM 3.6 mod). I limited both to 60 by using vertical refresh.

So list your settings, a forum such as this is for the free transfer of ideas. Not NA, Na, Na, Na,Na,na

With my GTX480 I get a constant smooth 60 FPS, but OFF is all I care about

Also a word about MODS for any game. YOU are doing the testing, no one else

The OFF Developers OFFER the Best SUPPORT I've EVER Seen, but only on the plain vanilla OFF

Well, you just stated that you cannot run both OFF and Silent Hunter at the same time with good settings on an ATI 5850 GC, I just wanted to say there is no problem to run both. The OFF settings are already available to everyone either on the OFF website or on the CA forum.

Thank you all for your advice to this thread. The following is my updated ultimate gaming pc build:

CPU -Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor
CPU Cooler -Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus 76.8 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler
Motherboard -Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H ATX LGA1155 Motherboard
Memory -Corsair Vengeance 12GB (3 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Hard Drive -Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Boot Drive -Intel 320 Series 40GB 2.5" Solid State Disk
Video Card -Asus GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2GB Video Card
Power Supply -OCZ 800W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply
Optical Drive -Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer
Operating System -Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit)
Total Cost to build is approx $1130.
Already own a Dell HD 24" Monitor