In the end, it is your money and we are telling you it's unwise to shell out $550 for a 7970 if you're going to stick with your Q6600 for another year or so. I said that even with Q6600+6870, it wasn't giving me smooth performance vs 2500k+6870 and 6870 is far ways off from a 7970. If I were you, and if you don't want to upgrade CPU yet, I would see in a couple months what Keplar has to offer, save some more money, and build your whole new comp around that.