Unfortunately I haven't got my mobo yet, as it is being shipped from Canada. However, I haven't heard of anyone having problems with them, newegg has real good reviews.
Well newegg didnt sell the watercooled version, so I couldnt get it from there, and I looked on ebay for it, found one for $260 US and bought it. On newegg it was 310 when it was in stock, so I guess I saved quite a bit of money, at the cost of having it come later.
Well the HD 3850 can be had for around 170, so if 200 is the MAX you can go for that. It's really a very nice card. I get 11,000 on 3Dmark with it. The HD 3800 cards, it seems, have become a favorite of afterdawn members!
You wont be disappointed with it. Just dont expect to get 60+fps out of Crysis, as no computer in the world can do 2/3 of that on max settings. Every other game should run like a dream though.
This video here is quite good on showing crysis on 3870's (crossfire) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flk8QsRLi2Q Guy puts everything to very high, apart from shaders which are at high with res of 1440x900. He gets about 29fps which looks good to me. Anyone know how much dx10 mode decreases fps by?
Quite a lot I expect. Of course DX10 does also disable anti-aliasing, but since Crysis doesn't support that anyway, it's no big loss. I highly recommend an HD3870 over anything else currently.
I used to think the 8800GT was the daddy this year but the 3870 IMO rules. Once i overclock it slightly ill be happy with my purchase.
I'd also highly recommend the 512MB version over the 256MB, especially if you'll be keeping the card for a reasonable length of time.
he's also only running both cards in 8x instead of 16x. I would think he would get better performance if he enabled them in 16x.
how about 2 7600gt's in sli? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130062 total after rebate=$150 for both of them
Hmm, let's see, two 7600GTs in SLI, no DX10, and 15 frames per second. An HD3850, DX10.1, and 70 frames per second. Go figure.
