TriBeard

I had the 15 inch version of that thing, and it ran super hot under load, especially a combined GPU/CPU load. The 17 is supposed to have bigger fans/better cooling but we'll see if it makes a difference or not. You could see if HIDevolution is running any good deals on the 17r5. If you get them to do a repaste on it, it does pretty well cooling wise. I know the bezels are thicker, but it's been great so far for me after a repaste. Stock it also runs hot, but that's just the garbage that dell passes off as thermal paste. If you do go dell, make sure you get prosupport on it. Their standard support tier is utter garbage. 
 

Given your budget and your requirement of a mac for work, get a mac as your dev machine/to use on the road (seems like you want a 13 since you think the 15 is too heavy and large, though the 15 would likely be able to handle some light gaming tasks while you're on the go if you got one with a dGPU and accepted 1080p gaming instead of trying for 1440p) and then build a nice desktop as your gaming machine.

Yeah,
 
290 <= 970
390 = 290x > 970
970 < 390x ~ 980

Get the Asrock X99 Killer. It has a ton of features for the money.

Doesn't matter. They advertised it as something more than what it was, and therefore are in the wrong.

Pentium D extreme edition comes to mind. The 8800 Ultra was kinda stupid back in the day, and the 3000 series from AMD wasn't really competitive. Other than that, I'm not old enough to remember stuff from "the good old days".

To be the contrary opinion here, I've pretty much sworn them off after a few bad experiences me and my friends have had. They're great until something goes wrong. I had a monitor that got lost back in the Christmas time UPS/Fed-ex forgetting how to ship stuff situation. I called them the day after Christmas, and they refused to send another unit even though they awknowledged that it was lost in the mail and said they'd need 1-2 weeks to sort it out, then they could process a replacement at that time. Then, they shipped a new GPU to an old address that was still on file with them even though I had selected the one that I wanted them to ship it to. They said if you didn't remove it completely, there was no guarantee they wouldn't ship it there, then charged a a 20% restocking fee when they got the card back because the apartment complex where it was sent sent it back. a 20% fee for a shipping error where they got the product back unopened is crazy.

The capstone line is very well reviewed. Just be aware that if you run in to issues, you WILL be required to send them the dead unit before they send you a replacement. Dealt with that already. Hence the EVGA I have now. 

It will depend on the game. With something like Arma 2/3 that doesn't utilise many cores, there will be bottlenecking. With things like BF4, you will be fine as it can use all the cores. 
 
Best solution is to switch to something like an i5 4690K if you can. Fewer, more powerful cores are a better option for games at the moment. 
 
EDIT: That being said, you'll be fine in most situations. It won't be a huge difference most of the time. 

Steam in home streaming works really well on AMD cards as well, at least for me, and the gaming evolved app now has screen capture and playback for the last so many minutes just like Geforce experience. The feature difference is really shrinking. 

Team viewer is great for what it was designed for. However, the input lag/video lag would be too much to make all but the slowest paced RTS games impossible. Steam in home streaming is a much better solution, and works very well for me, and many others as well. 

On the left side of the monitor there are 4 USB 3.0 ports. These are the downstream ports, aka the ones you plug your flash drive or whatever into. There is one USB in port on the bottom of the monitor that looks kinda like the one on the back of a printer. This is where the USB cable goes that plugs in to the computer so that those ports function. 

On the left side of the monitor there are 4 USB 3.0 ports. These are the downstream ports, aka the ones you plug your flash drive or whatever into. There is one USB in port on the bottom of the monitor that looks kinda like the one on the back of a printer. This is where the USB cable goes that plugs in to the computer so that those ports function. 

That's for a typical CPU/GPU setup. This is a bit old, and the APU's are two generations older, but the basic tech is the same.
 

Right, I understand that. I guess what I'm trying to say is I didn't know if the right and left channel that are on the headphone jack each carry the signal for the subwoofer, or if they split it somehow.

I saw the demo video, and there's no way that was rendered on an Xbone. In any case, I'm deeply sadened by the fact that I won't get to play that game, as I really enjoyed the one from last year. That being said, screw buying an Xbox one. Not going to happen. If I were to buy a console, it would be a PS4, and I don't even see myself doing that. Way to go SE and Microsoft. Hope it works out for you. Not.
 
Also, so much for caring about PC gaming, as if we ever thought they really did.

That looks pretty good to me. Microcenter has the 200r for 57 and then you get a 10 dollar rebate on it. It's a real nice case for the money.
 
Also, if you live by a microcenter, you can get that CPU for 119 and the motherboard for at least 40 less than you're paying now.

socket 478 celeron something or other, and a PCI Nvidia fx5200. It played star trek armada 2 though, so that was alright.

I've had this bag for 2 years now, and it still looks almost as good as they day I bought it. It's held up way better than any other bag I have ever had, has a lifetime waranty, and can fit my 17 inch laptop and tablet no problem, as well a book or two, mouse, charger, etc. It's also comfortable to carry around.
 
http://www.amazon.com/SwissGear-17-Gray-Notebook-Backpack/dp/B0092W1BIW

As for keyboard, the k60/k70 (corsair) looks really nice, but IMO pretty much any mechanical keyboard with a decent design and a backlight should be fine, unless you have a particular preference for switch type. Headsets are funny too, as head size and how much sound quality matters make a big difference.
 
I would probably go with a k70 and either a corsair 1500v2 headset, or your favorite pair of headphones (if you have some nice ones) and a modmic.

I know it's about $150 over, but something like this would be more along the lines of what I would choose.
 
http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/Y9GPgs

Currently looking at
 
Canon SX600
 
Nikon L830
 
Nikon L330
 
Thoughts?

Really, in either of those cases, I would go for the Nikon, but 3100 vs 1100d is IMO a no brainer for the nikon.

Dayz is just poorly optimized and runs in to issues on a lot of systems. That being said, I wouldn't think you bottleneck too much with your current setup, but you almost certainly will if you upgrade to a 780.

And I understand the IPC vs number of core argument. I'm just saying that it's going to be optimized for 8 cores, so you'll see the gap between an i5 and an Amd part close because sure, per clock the i5 beats amd. But if you have twice the threads, the amd can pull ahead. A fast quad core would perform the same as a half as fast 8 core basically.