chopdok

80$ for Ivy Bridge i5 is not a bad deal. Its definitely better than G4560 KL Pentium, which is the sub-100$ CPU of choice these days. The problem will be motherboard. 1155 is old socket, your choice would be limited, and even then - older motherboard design means you will give up on some stuff, like USB 3.1 Type-C, m.2 that can work in x4 PCI-E mode, and such - those features were only found on very high end motherboards at the time 1155 was relevant, and even then, not on every board.
 
What will your PC be used for?

Asus is smaller, quieter. It has only one 6+2 PCIE power, so it's overclocking potential is, in theory, somewhat limited. In real life of course, its all about the particular unit you get - some will OC well, others just don't. However, you should not buy it if you are planning of modding the BIOS to remove power and thermal constraints. Also, if you have old-skool multi-rail PSU, need to pay special attention to which rail you connect the card to. But again, its quite small for the card of this performance range, and is the most silent 970 out there, matched only by MSI Gaming 4G.
 
Gigabyte G1 is massive. Biggest GTX 970 there is, won't fit in every tower. It is also not as quiet - 3 fans it has are smaller, they need to spin faster to generate same airflow as big fans. But it also has lower temps, 2 PCI-E power connectors - hence, for overclocking, theoretically better than Strix. Also, it has the best monitor connectivity - 3DP 2DVI 1HDMI. Really good card for overclockers - mod the BIOS, remove all the constraints - you will probably hit 1500-1600 without thermal throttling. Again, if the unit you get is a good clocker.

Double.

Well, I would classify what you have as way above high-end. That is "enthusiast grade", above and beyond what average gamer can and should afford. You have some amazing rigs, but you don't need to have that much to enjoy quality gaming with high FPS. Today's high-end gaming PC is i5, 8 gigs of RAM, and GTX 970 or R9 290/290X. For 1440p/1080p that is. You can get a good, mid-high end gaming PC for ~700$, and enjoy 1080p, high fidelity graphics and good performance, 60 FPS or more in all AAA titles.
 
Even 500$ PC, with i3 or FX6300, 8 GB of VRAM, and 750 Ti or R9 270X can deliver very enjoyable gaming experience. The whole idea of PC gaming is that you can spend less on games, by having sales and big library of cheap but still great AAA titles of past years, and spend more on hardware. You of course, know this, but some people don't.

Fair enough. What is important when overclocking a Maxwell based GPU is measured boost. "Measured" is the key word. Clocks on 970 are not static. Depending on the core clock, temperatures and power draw, the card will push its clocks up or down. Even more, in actual games, the clocks will fluctuate, usually slightly below what you can measure in benchmarks. Generally, a good 970 will reach between 1400 and 1500 measured boost without any voltage tweaks, or only with slight voltage adjustments. By removing VBIOS voltage and power draw constraints, you can push 1500-1600 measured boost - on air. However, there is a known issue with boost and voltage - some games can cause the card to change the clocks too often, and voltage regulation won't keep up with it, and it can cause freezes/crashes.
 
I can hit 1526 max measured boost with 4000 (+500) Memory clocks (8000 DDR transfer rate). If I drop VRAM to stock, I can push 1560 Mhz. That is with +25mv voltage, power limit 110%, and no VBIOS modifications.

Fair enough. What is important when overclocking a Maxwell based GPU is measured boost. "Measured" is the key word. Clocks on 970 are not static. Depending on the core clock, temperatures and power draw, the card will push its clocks up or down. Even more, in actual games, the clocks will fluctuate, usually slightly below what you can measure in benchmarks. Generally, a good 970 will reach between 1400 and 1500 measured boost without any voltage tweaks, or only with slight voltage adjustments. By removing VBIOS voltage and power draw constraints, you can push 1500-1600 measured boost - on air. However, there is a known issue with boost and voltage - some games can cause the card to change the clocks too often, and voltage regulation won't keep up with it, and it can cause freezes/crashes.
 
I can hit 1526 max measured boost with 4000 (+500) Memory clocks (8000 DDR transfer rate). If I drop VRAM to stock, I can push 1560 Mhz. That is with +25mv voltage, power limit 110%, and no VBIOS modifications.

If gaming is not an issue - then whatever is the cheapest you can find that has enough monitor ports for you. Virtually all of GPUs by AMD or nVidia sold today have hardware accelerated h.264 decoding support - so whatever you want.  I would personally suggest GT 720 - because of its very low power consumption, you don't need to worry about PSU. Also, do keep in mind that most modern GPUs have an issue with legacy PCI-E 1.0 ports. Even though officially, they are supposed to work, in reality, the ones that were designed to take advantage of power management extensions introduced with PCI-E 2.x will not work on PCI-E 1.0 ports, only PCI-E 1.1 - and even then, 50/50 chance, depending on the chipset.

Any card with that has DisplayPort 1.2 or better can drive 6 monitors with DisplayPort hub. You wont be able to have 6 monitor surround gaming, but no single GPU has enough horsepower to do it anyway.

Yes. And its Linux, not Linus.

In that price range, from best to worst
 
1. R9 270
2. R7 265
3. GTX 750 Ti
4. R7 260x
5. GTX 750
6. R7 250x

Price/performance - R9 290 is better. It is 15-20% slower - GTX 970 had significant performance improvements vs R9 290 with late drivers in many games, while AMD drivers had little to no performance improvement over the year. But its about 30% cheaper. So despite being somewhat slower, and drivers barely improving, its still a better deal.
 
That said, you need at least 550w PSU to power it. While 970 you can make work at 400w. So, as an upgrade, GTX 970 is usually better, because you don't need to worry about anything.

4 GB on a 750 Ti is useless. Even with 2 GB, when you push your graphical settings for the game to actually leverage that much VRAM - performance is horrible. But since 1 GB is too little, and there is no 1.5 GB version, then 750 Ti 2 GB is optimal choice.
 
GTX 960 Ti is not officially confirmed yet. Its almost a sure thing - GTX 960 board today are sold with 2 GB 128 bit VRAM, but the PCB was designed with up to 3 GB 192 bit VRAM support. So, not a question of "if", but rather "when". And even then - in 1080p, the card is not bottle-necked by its VRAM in any way. And for 1440p (let alone 4K), there are doubts whether the chip itself has enough computational capacity to deliver - even if VRAM wasn't an issue.
 
R7 360X? Havent heard anything about that one. Will probably be a rebrand, judging from the way things are going.
 
TL;DR - Get R9 280.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1184?vs=1355
 
GTX 970 will be a decent upgrade. 10-25% faster, depending on the game. Higher OC potential.

Yeah, I remember laughing so hard about this when. "That poor rat, what a cruelty !!1!1oneone". The fact that you killed tons of human beings before and after that crawling sequence - thats alright tho, I guess. Not that I think any of these complaints are valid, its a damn virtual world. But at least, if you gonna whine about "violence in vidya", be friggin consistent lol.
 
I really dont understand why governments are so obsessed with videogames. Worried about children - alright, but how about you focus on children that actually do need help, like orphans, like the ones who have problematic families. Victims of actual abuses, in actual, real world. And leave the matters of education, and allowing/disallowing child's access to certain videogames/content in the hands of their parents.

Yeah, I remember laughing so hard about this when. "That poor rat, what a cruelty !!1!1oneone". The fact that you killed tons of human beings before and after that crawling sequence - thats alright tho, I guess. Not that I think any of these complaints are valid, its a damn virtual world. But at least, if you gonna whine about "violence in vidya", be friggin consistent lol.
 
I really dont understand why governments are so obsessed with videogames. Worried about children - alright, but how about you focus on children that actually do need help, like orphans, like the ones who have problematic families. Victims of actual abuses, in actual, real world. And leave the matters of education, and allowing/disallowing child's access to certain videogames/content in the hands of their parents.

Why is it sad? Overclocking was never a sure thing, at least as far as people with reasonable IT knowledge are concerned. I really feel like people should stop feeling entitled to a good overclock. Every product you buy has specs written on the box - that is what you are paying for, as per consumer laws. Anything above that is not guaranteed. Never ever ever take overclocking into consideration when deciding on the performance you want to pay for.

The 280x is much better, and please for the love of god stop using GPUboss for comparing stuff and for that matter CPUBoss as well.

My advice i've given to lads over the years....
 
 
"If you always wait for the latest and greatest in this hobby, you will always have nothing...."

I remember PETA(?) throwing a fit because of the "animal abuse" in the first campaign level of BF3, where you stab a rat with your knife that's biting you. Read an article about it a long time ago.

That is simply incorrect. GTX 960 beats R9 280 by 5-10% in every benchmark and game. Did you even read GTX 960 reviews, or just parroting nonsense you've heard?
 
Anyway. Pure price performance - R9 280 is better. It is slightly weaker than 960, but quite a bit cheaper. GTX 960 is slightly faster overall, and much quieter and power efficient.
 
If electricity costs, hot weather, noise or limited size constraints are an issue - GTX 960 is the best choice. If you just want maximum performance for lowest price, then R9 280 is the best choice.
 
My personal choice would be R9 280X.

Well, most of 960 boards that I saw can have 6 VRAM chips, but only 4 mounted. Adding 2 more will give you a 3 GB 192 bit VRAM card.

CPU shouldn't be an issue, whenever I watch 4K videos on YT, my CPU usage is around 5%. I have i5-4430. Update your drivers, try FireFox beta - it has HTML5 support. Also check if you have the latest Flash player plugin.
 
EDIT : Yup - I just checked - 4K 60 FPS videos on YT, 5% CPU in Firefox Beta, 75-80% CPU in Chrome. Used latest FF Beta and Chrome. Interestingly enough - despite CPU load never reaching 100%, video was still choppy as hell. Seems like some bugged codec in Flash Player plugin for Chrome.

Depends. If the owner didn't overclock it to hell and/or mined on it 24/7, then yeah, worth it.
 
Also, AFAIK, new R9 290/290X are going for 200-300 euros as well.

Mid-range GPUs is where the overclocking really shines in my opinion. On higher end GPUs, where your FPS are usually good and very playable to begin with, a few extra FPS is not what will drastically change your gaming experience. On less powerfull GPUs, every extra frame counts, and not so much because of average FPS, but because it will increase minimal FPS. You will get less drops and stuttering, and when FPS drops do happen, they wont be as bad. Also, mid-range GPUs usually have quite a bit of overclocking headroom, they are not as hot and you can get nice results even if you are not using a board with top-notch cooling system.
 
Keep in mind, OC depends on a particular sample, you might not get a good stable overclock at all.
 
On your YouTube issue - Adobe Flash player has some stability issues working with AMD hardware acceleration. I had BSOD once from updating to the latest version of plugin for Firefox, had to roll back. Try using different browser, or different plugin version, or disable hardware acceleration entirely. The best way to test OC though, is to run a good graphical benchmark, like Unigine Valley or Heaven, 3DMark or something like that.
 
 
 
 
These are nice results for 780ti. Above average, I would say. But I have to point out - you got lucky. Units that can get good results without voltage are rare, usually very high ASIC ones. That said, high ASIC doesn't takes increased voltages all too well, so usually your max OC without voltage increase is your max stable OC. But again, depends on your luck with a particular board more than anything else.

Unigine Heaven. Have it running for an hour or two, you can do other stuff on your PC in the meantime. If the temps are OK, and no stability issues after one hour of Heaven, your GPU is likely stable. Keep in mind, some particular games might, and most likely will, have issues with OC. I would suggest having separate OC profiles, one max OC and one mild OC, for hot days and unstable games.
 
Also, important - you need to watch for atrifacts, they are usually sign of too much OC - so watch at least one full loop of a bench you are using, pay special attention to surfaces and lighting.