The 660ti and the 670 are both solid and great for the price (Have the 670 myself and no complaints).

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

I grabbed a 660Ti for $300 total last Christmas. It came down to the Asus versus the MSI one, and I went with the Asus for better performance.

https://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/GTX660_TIDC2O2GD5/

Pretty long card (10.7" x 5.4" x 1.7") so make sure you have room when considering it.

I'm either going to get the 660ti or the Raedon 7870 for my build- Which would you recommend, AMD or Nvidia? I'll have an Intel i5 3470, if that matters. My mobo is http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-motherboard-gab75md3h

What is your processor? You could potentially hold back a new card in quite a few games. TF2 definitely wouldn't see any benefit from a new video card.

#5 660 ti trades blows with the 7950, so I would get that card. It can be overclocked near 670 gtx levels. I would either go with the msi twin frozr or the asus OC edition.

I have the 670 gtx only because the 660 ti didn't come out till the end of the summer. 670 gtx is really nice though and I'll be set for the next 4-5 years as I'm content with having to dial down the graphics settings to 'HIGH' if I need to. For most 660 TI is more than enough if you are good with a mix of high/ultra settings with 2-4x anti-aliasing at 1080P depending on the game.

Thanks for all the help! I;m still unsure.

I have a fairly large case 265mm x 440mm x 515mm.

I have an AMD FX-4100 Overclocked at 4.0 GhZ

I've now noticed that a lot of different brands make the 660ti, which would you recommend?
I was thinking of getting the Gigabyte, purely for compatibility with my MoBo.

#9 msi twin frozr (good OC ing, can be a little loud) or the asus OC edition (very quiet and good temps). Gigabyte is alright, but I had problems with the windforce oc edition for the 670 gtx. I can't really say anything for their 660 ti. zotac is probably the cheapest one you can get.

Asus
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121656

MSI
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127696

-Points to my flag-
I can't use NewEgg unfortunately. Kinda sucks, because my entire build would have been much easier and much cheaper.

Kepler refresh coming soon-ish? Not really sure when its actually happening but it was scheduled for march so you might want to wait a bit.

660 ti is overpriced to hell it doesn't even come near the 7950 and it is nearly the same price. get either the 660 twin frozr iii edition from msi or the 7870 ghz edition they both can handle games fine.

I would say at stock speeds the 660ti and the 7950 are comparable in performance. From reading other forums, the 7950 does seem to overclock better than the 660ti.

The 7xxx series also has a problem with frame latency which AFAIK, is still being fixed.
Dont quote me on the last part, it might already be fixed :c
http://techreport.com/news/24136/driver-software-to-be-tweaked-to-reduce-radeon-frame-latencies-in-series-of-updates

The 660ti's 192bit memory bus is pretty limiting and not very future-proof. Might be a minor issue with next gen engines coming out soon. Just something to keep in mind.

the ti version is literally no more than 10% better than the stock 660 yet is over 70 dollars more. Just like the difference between the 670 and 680, if you oc the 670 it'll pretty much preform like a 680 and saves you a ton of cash to get whatever else you want like ram or an ssd etc

I avoided both the issues i mentioned by getting a 670 and just oc'ed it 8)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127685

btw OP the 4100 may bottleneck a little from a 660 and beyond so i suggest upgrading to a 6300 or 4300

IIRC the bulldozer cpus have poor single thread performance. I would definitely upgrade.

Upgrading your GPU won't do you that much good, since your 560 is already a really nice card. Anything higher will probably bottleneck, so I'd just put the money into SSD/RAM/Cooler upgrades or an 8350

The 8350 looks pricey, but pretty worth it for what it is.

Any idea if it'd be compatible with my MoBo?

(In case you didn't guess, I never actually built my PC, I'm still pretty dim when it comes to this stuff).

yes it should be compatible with your mobo, the 8350 is am3+ socket like your board. Make sure your PSU has sufficient wattage to handle the cpu and gpu upgrades.

This is so much to take in at once T~T

I've decided NOT to upgrade my GPU and upgrade the CPU instead, since that appears to be the best option.
I have a pretty crappy PSU, but that wouldn't be too much to upgrade, right?

Just upgrading the CPU alone shouldn't put too much strain on the PSU, as far as I can tell

a decent 500-600w psu shouldn't cost you that much and it allows for future upgrades. What are your system specs right now? (list everything if possible :c)

No idea how much of this is actually useful
http://i.imgur.com/Oq1yAfW.png
Also, since it doesn't appear to list my PSU, I have a 500W Xigamtek PSU.

Also, thanks for being so patient and helpful. I really appreciate it!

You should be fine on a 500w psu if you're only upgrading your cpu.

Keep in mind that you're cutting it close with 500w if you upgrade your GPU in the future. SHOULD be fine with 500w but you probably won't be able to OC much with a newer GPU in there.

Eh, I cracked and bought the 8350.

Now I just need to wait for it to arrive, and figure out how to actually install it :c

Good choice getting the 8350, should be a good upgrade for you.

If you decide to buy a GPU down the road, I'd recommend the 7850 or 7950 depending on how much cash you're willing to spend.

I plan to buy another stick of 8gb RAM, to get 16gb total, but it's not really priority at the moment.
Thanks for the suggestion, though!

Disregard my comment about the RAM, you have plenty, I read your specs wrong.

Make sure you don't bend the pins on the cpu. For AMD the pins are on the CPU; For intel the pins are on the mobo.

Read the instructions carefully if its your first time. Also, if cpu temps really bug you like some people (me) you might want to clean off the stock paste and use something like AS5 or MX4. If you plan on overclocking, the CM hyper 212 evo is a great budget cooler. Even if you don't plan on it, an aftermarket cooler does a better job and is a lot less noisier. (The last time I had an AMD chip, the stock cooler was ridiculously loud on 100%)