It's finally time to retire my AMD components

[Ridah]

I haven't visited this section of the forums in a long time, I haven't had much of a need. I hit a sweet spot that lasted nearly four years in terms of future-proofing my rig and only needed to replace the video card about once a year to keep current. Sadly, I replaced my 580 GTX today with the 680 GTX and saw nearly identical gaming performance which I guess means my AMD Phenom II X4 @ 3.4ghz (with 6gigs of RAM) has become the bottleneck. Actually, I suspect now that it's been a bottleneck for a few games, but back when I replaced my old card with the 580 there were still notable gains.

Anyone have Intel CPU and mobo suggestions in the mid-price range?

[TheAtomicKid]

Pick your poison on motherboard, all the name brands tend to perform within 1-2% of each other. Find one that you like either by looks, features, or whatever, and then go read a couple of reviews. Rinse/repeat until you're happy with what you see. Personally I like Gigabyte these days, but that's just me, and they're not 'perfect'... bios could be a bit better.

CPU? Since you just picked up a GTX 680, I'd say you need to look along the lines of an intel 3570K, which will currently run you approximately 219$ plus or minus a tad. (the 3570's have hyperthreading support disabled, which means it will run slightly faster in some games, since the cores don't get loaded up as much (remember, hyperthreading emulates extra cpu cores by using 'spare' resources on each core when they're not in use by the primary load)).

You can get a slower cpu if you want, but at most you could save a hundred or so? without cutting it down so much that game performance starts to drop... and it won't be as futureproof that way. You really don't want to drop below four cores if you can avoid it. Two cores will run your game, but they'll pretty much stay loaded up whilst the game runs, and if the system starts to do anything background-ish, you'll feel it.

Might be better served here by updating your post with a price range. 'Mid-price' means different things to different people.

What's the rest of your rig like?

Atomic

[Teggy]

I take it your motherboard is not AM3+?

[heloder]

What do you plan on doing with your old Mobo, CPU, and RAM?

[Ridah]

I take it your motherboard is not AM3+?

It's not... But frankly I'm ready to try and Intel build (plus I have a friend who works there and can get me a discount).

[Ridah]

What do you plan on doing with your old Mobo, CPU, and RAM?

I might sell them off... You can PM me if interested.

[DOSHIGH]

Your friend know when Intel plans on releasing their next Chipset & CPU, aka Haswell?  I have seen 2013 Q2 & Q3 release dates, so you may want to hold off a bit.  I'm planning on a new build once Haswell CPU's hit reasonable pricing, which is hopefully in Q3. 

[Turtle]

I have the exact same CPU, and yeah, it's served me well, but I've also experienced the bottleneck that you speak of.

I have a AMD 7950 now and while some games run great, some that are more CPU intensive slow to a crawl.

Since, I do high end stuff I can justify some some pretty costly upgrades, even if my usual apps are running fine.

[Ridah]

I decided on the i7-3770k which I'm getting for half price through my friend, I'll get the motherboard and RAM on Newegg since all of Intel's motherboards are surprisingly expensive, even with the discount.