The Radeon 3850/3870s are quite good cards and perform well enough in the vast majority of apps. What's your entire budget for this thing?

That Core2 is pretty much the sweet spot for it's price, and that Gigabyte motherboard is very nice.

You could potentially get a 160 gig HD for $50.

IDE is being phased out pretty quickly.

I have IDE hard drives laying all over the place. As long as the motherboard has an IDE connector in addition to SATA for future upgrades, not too worried about the HD I've decided.


I was aiming for a budget of 500 dollars, and I already know that the CPU and motherboard I mentioned earlier plus 2GB of Corsair RAM and a tube of arctic silver is gonna cost me 360 dollars with shipping. Which is why I was looking at the 8600 GTS in the 100 dollar range...


I am tempted to just spend the extra money and get the 8800GT, and I probably would if I could find a good deal on a power supply (that won't blow up on me) that wouldn't put me over $650...


Would my motherboard/cpu/ram be adequate enough to legitimize an 8800GT?

Morgan:

I dub thee, "Resident TRF Computer Sexpert".

You have been so dubbed.

That motherboard, the 2.66 Core 2, and 2 GB RAM would be rock solid with the 8800GT.

I would spring for it, but maybe thats just me.

I'd try to look for some comparisons between to see if the performance difference justifies the price difference. I truly believe it does, but I could be wrong.

The 8800 GT absolutely annihilates the 8600 GT.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3140&p=8

Ughhhh.... should've done 2 8800 GT's in SLI...

Bugger.

Really. The GT is the best bang for your buck and blows all but the $400+ cards out of the water. It's a mid priced card with performance matching the luxury cards.

I did try to push you to that option? I'm sorry if I did not. :(

In most benchmarks the Radeon 3870 is 80-90% as fast. In my experience the Vista drivers for the Radeons are better.

Which 350 Watt PSU do you have? It probably won't have the PCI-E power connectors or the amperage needed to push the system you're looking at.

If it's not something solid like an Enermax I suggest getting one of these

Corsair PSUs FTW. I got the 620 and it's teh sex.

Morgan: When I first started planning the computer I don't believe the GT's were out yet and I opted for 1 GTX over 2 GTS's (per your recommendation). Then when I came back from sea you recommended a GT but I failed to notice that was something other than the GTS. I'm still happy with my decision though because before too long prices will drop on the GTX's and when I need to upgrade I'll be rocking GTX's in SLI (if my PSU will support).

I have an Antec smartpower 350 watt, which came with the case. I did in fact discover that it wouldn't be adequate for my system...


Made my purchases last night, went with the 8800 GT :). Damn you Hyfe, you made me want more!


I had very little $$ left to get a power supply since I went for the better graphics card, ended up getting an Antec 500 watt. I saw some complaints that Antec's quality has gone down since the last time I bought a PSU, but whatever I've never had a problem.

The 620 will push a pair of GTXs with no problem. The Antec Earthwatts are decent units. I have some sort of Antec in the 400 watt range and it's fine.