Oh snap! HOLD ON A SEC! So this is actually true?! WTF is going on here then? Why the inferior image quality?! :S

http://www.vr-zone.com/articles/AMD_Radeon_HD3850_and_HD3870_-_AMD%27s_salvation%3F/5392-14.html

Man... first of all I wanted to get the 3870, then I changed my mind and started leaning more towards the 8800, now i'm sitting in the middle! Has this "issue" been fixed?

[QUOTE="ruuuj"]Cheers mate. But can anyone answer my question above please + what temperature does this card run @ load?debusentel

Mine runs on average 70-80C full load. Which is well within XFX's recommended Temps.

EDIT: Yes the GTS already OC'd can go even higher without a problem.

Hmmm that sounds a little high to me. I thought that the fan (stock) kept temps @ load at about 60c... dunno where I read that. But what are the actual recommended temps? Oh, not trying to be irritating here, but could somebody please answer my other question! -

Does the 3870 actually have better image quality than the 8800GT/S? I remember a screenshot being released awhile back and it compared two of the same screenshots from the Crysis demo, and the 3870 was the clear winner. Is this still the case? Or was that just a driver issue or something? I don't really want to be buying a card that has inferior image quality to an even cheaper card to be fair, kind of spoils the whole point...

Bah! AMD is fine! Besides, modern games are HEAVILY RELYING on GPUs nowadays, not CPUs, so don't give me or this guy any of that crap please - I'm saying this as long as you've got a decent dual-core CPU. If you're resolution is 1024x768, then you really do need to get a good Intel CPU, but any higher resolution, don't even bother mate, the weight shifts onto the GPU past this point, and besides, you'll have all of that extra cash to spend on a wicked GPU (Y) (3870, 8800GT/S, or maybe even 3870X2/9800GX2!). But anyways, go for the DDR2 800mhz RAM (bloody cheap now) and either the 5000/5600 - it's up to you really, you can always overclock either of them.

EDIT: Just noticed that the 5000 is Black Edition. Go for that. Get a good third party cooler, and overclock like crazy. Urmm, mobo wise, I'm not entirely sure, I'll leave somebody else to talk about that. Oh, and the Antec 900 would be a very smart move - cooling issues would (if any) become a thing of the past.