The Official Budget-Conscious Dream Machine!

If I was buying now (I'm not) I'd go with the HD3870.

 

Agreed. The HD3870 is an OUTSTANDING card! I think it was an intelligent move by ATi/AMD.

The performance is GOOD and the price is AMAZING

 

<nods>
If only there was a faster equivalent...

 

man i gotta agree with you guys...i'm planning to get a HD3870...

 

Well, with the surprisingly good performance shown by Phenom and the outstanding HD3800 series... AMD may have a chance to remain competitive.

I have high hopes for the next set of Radeon cards and I would also like to see what happens when you fit a Phenom CPU with a motherboard actually MADE for it. I think they could easily match the Core 2 Duo.

Worst case scenario: the performance won't match up(like the Pentium D) but it will remain a competitive part due to aggressive pricing.

 

Sam, no I don't mean con people. I am talking about simple economics here. You get something that is in high demand and people will pay you more for it. I was just joking about the hustlin part, jeez...

 

abuzar has a point. Get parts people need... and scalp them a little. Supply and demand. Simple

 

well that doesn't always work out...

@Estuansis i dont like your "Worst case scenario"...hope that does not happen...

 

If the new boards are anything like the current ones, the worst case scenario has already happened. Every Phenom is slower than every Core 2 Quad at the moment, not a great start. It seems the ATI half of AMD is showing a comeback, but not the CPU half.

 

yea tru...they need new bios for the cpu...and some upgrades...

 

So I just ordered a HD 3780. I plan on buying about 7 more because thay are about 225 bucks, and I can sell them for a lot more on ebay.

 

Sigh. They're not even available in this country at the moment, let alone for a decent price.

 

same here...we don't even have 8800GT yet...

its 11:29PM...need to sleep...had to wake up early today to get my report...and guess what...

 

Wow, that's sad

Once they show up be sure to get one early

 

just wait till after xmas, the hd3870 will get back to the £130 price, and the 8800GT back to the £150 price. and they should finally be in stock.

its like the whole wii dilema

 

hi.. i was looking into building a budget pc for a couple weeks and found this thread very helpful.. what parts could somebody suggest for a gaming pc around a budget of $800..

and what is mobo??

 

mobo would be mother board.

for a budget, i would go for a hd3850, e12X0, and a p31 gigabyte mobo

a sonata III case w/500PSU. and 2GB of cheap corsair, crusial, geil, or OCZ, pc6400 ram

 

Don't forget to take a look at some AMD CPUs. The X2 series is down in price with good performance.

 

Ok so the Dell website now says ships in 3-5 weeks!!! So I canceled. Anyway, I am thinking maybe I should just buy the 512MB 3850. What's the difference, just clock speed? Can I overclock it to a 3870?

 

They're slightly different architectures, don't think of it as a simple BIOS flash. You want the 3870, trust me.