On behalf of my brother: GTX 580 3GB?

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My brother wants to upgrade his current system:
Intel i7 3.8 Ghz
8 Gb DDR3 Ram
GTX 570 1.4 Gb
700 Watt PSU (He is going to need to get a 1200 one imo)
He wants to play Metro at a 60 Fps + framerate.
He is worried about GTA5 not playing on his system. To be honest I am not worried. His system is almost as good as it gets.
What do you think?
Is it worth it?
My answer is probably not. But Im not a gamer (I am a bit of a gamer, mainly a geek).
?

not worth it at all,

i wouldnt be worried it wont run, the newest generation is relatively mild on hardware compared to the previous one (in relation to the common hardware out there)
i have 8gb of ram and only an i5 and i still havent had any issues with any games (most games cant use all 6 cores anyway, most use 2 or 4, the i5 has four) i even have a mild OC profile i tested but i havent had a reason to use it yet.

Metro is notoriously difficult as far as getting good framerates.

That said, if he has the money and he's willing to pay for it, he might as well. Computer hardware is one of those things where the really cheap stuff is pretty bad, then you get into a moderately expensive area that is about 80% as fast as the fastest, and the fastest stuff is about 1.5-2x more expensive for about 20% more speed.

If he thinks paying that extra amount is worth the relatively small boost in speed, then why not

Every benchmarking site I've ever seen says it's tough to get good framerates on Metro, although nowadays they tend to run games at 2048x1536 because otherwise everything runs at 100fps all the time..

I've never tried Metro myself so I cannot comment firsthand

An upgrade from a 570 to a 580 will be marginal at best. For Metro 2033, upgrading from a 570 to a 580 will give him about an increase of six frames per second average assuming a resolution of 1920x1080. Buying a second 570 and running it in SLI configuration with the other will give an average increase of about 25 frames per second. The 570 is cheaper than the 580. If he really insists on upgrading his computer, it would be far cheaper and more efficient for him to buy a second 570.

As for GTA5, it is likely to have comparable system requirements as GTA4, which was not a game that taxed the GPU so much as the CPU. And it still looked ugly, no matter what hardware you threw at it.

The GTX 500 series is about to be become dated, as Nvidia will be releasing the GTX 600 series soon (probably this month or next).

Your brother might prefer to wait until the new cards come out (either to get one of the new cards, or to get the GTX 580 possibly cheaper as a result of them no longer being cutting edge).

I have a 560 Ti and it seems to run all games fine, even with 3D turned on which was a suprise (though I don't really use my pc for gaming much). A lot of the games are really designed for consoles hence don't push PC's too much. But if your brother is into having the top graphics cards then it might be worth waiting till the new ones come out.

Another alternative is to buy a second 570 and have them in "SLI" configuration (if the PC can handle 2 cards - obviously you'd need to make sure the new Power Supply can handle them) - i believe that having two 570s in the PC would dramatically outperfrom a single 580.

If nothing else, once the 600s are released, the 500s will be cheaper.

Nvidia 600 series are laptop chips, like the 400 series.

The ones to wait for are the 700 series, due out sometime mid-year, but top of the line 700 series won't be out til the end of the year or early 2013.

But I'm guessing that even when the initial 700 series comes out, there will be a slight price drop in the 500 series chips.
One could possibly see a $100-$200 price drop on 580's sometime this summer. (I'm just speculating, I could be wrong)

Of course if you went with a 700 series when they come out, you will also need a new motherboard with pci-e 3.0 if you want full performance.

Hopefully, nvidia will give us more info on their roadmap in may during E3.

Why do you think a 1200w PSU is needed? I'd recommend an 800w instead. If you're going all out for SLI, then you can think about breaking the 1kW barrier

Since when are either the 400 or 600 series laptop chips? I think you're getting confused with the M series, which are across the entire range.

For info - the Nvidia GTX 680 is now out. Its (probably) the fastest single processor card out there just now (for mainstream gaming), though there's a strong suspicion that Nvidia had an even better card available but choose not to release it as this one already beats or matches the competition (I suppose this doesn't matter too much though).

I think the 580's have dropped in price or are dropping in price.

I find it hard to believe he isn't getting 60fps in Metro with his current rig.

I'm running it on a Core 2 Duo / GTX 260 and I've had no framerate problems whatsoever.