I have little doubt that a properly overclocked 9800GTX will completely smash the HD 4850. iBP_Rickochet

Prove it. Be careful you might fry it.

The HD 4850 on the other hand... barely went anywhere...

iBP_Rickochet

No need to overclock it, at stock it performs better than the 9800GTX XXX edition, while being cheaper and consuming less power.

I just compared the 9600gt, 3870, and 4850. for the most part the 3870 is either equal or even better than the other two. they obviously had one (maybe two) things over the 3870, but I wouldn't exactly call them far superior.krazykarl0419

I don't know where you saw that but they must have benched the 4850 at idle.

Anandtech
The Tech Report

Why dosent Ati fix the heat issue?Horny-Dude

Apparently they cared more about noise than heat. It will probably be fixed with the next drivers. I hope they will learn for the next round.

the 9800gtx will be dropping to $200 in a couple weeks. wait a bit :Dkrazykarl0419

The 170$ Asus HD4850 beats an overclocked 9800gtx, so no need to wait. :p

Excellent choices, except for a few things.

I suggest you get the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro LGA775 2500RPM 45CFM instead of the Noctua. It's cheaper and does a good job already. (28$ vs 50$)

And the G.SKILL F2-6400CL4D-4GBPK PC2-6400 4GB 2X2GB DDR2-800 CL4-4-4-12 240PIN Dual Channel Memory Kit would be sufficient. (105$ vs 145$)

With the money saved, you can get a nice Western Digital Caviar SE16 640GB SATA2 7200RPM 16MB Hard Drive instead of the Seagate Barracuda. (85$)

Get a cheaper CPU.

Keep the HD4870, but pick a different brand. I've read horror stories about Sapphire customer support. Visiontek offers a lifetime warranty and they have an RMA center in the USA. Lucky you, I wish they had one in Canada too.