pauldovi

I know your putting that system together soon. Based on this review and many others I have seen, the GTX260 is probably a better choice than the 4870. They are pretty close in the average FPS department to each other, but the GTX260 definitely has higher "low fps". Not to mention the GTX260 is cheaper and comes with a good lifetime warranty.

Also a little off topic, but the Q9550 dropped in price.

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VulcanDragon

Yeah, but if I do a 4870 I can add another in Crossfire mode a year from now. If doing so makes sense price/performance wise compared to the "current" cards a year from now, anyway. Going Nvidia closes the door on that option altogether, since I have no intention of getting an Nvidia SLI-enabled board.

Oh crap, it did, didn't it...$200 cheaper than it was yesterday on NewEgg!

And here I am, right where I didn't want to be, with yet another tough "jump in now or waitjust a little longer" decision. If they had done this on July 20 like they we all thought they would, I would have the rig built by now! But since then they've pushed up Nehalem's launch to September, and now I am really leaning towards just waiting it out and going Nehalem. When we weren't going to see these until 2009, blowing off Nehalem was an easy decision...now, not so much.

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Vulcan Dragon
Core i7 920 @ 3.7 GHz
Currently Playing: Galactic Civilizations II (PC); Call of Duty 4 (PC); Halo 3:ODST (X360); Rock Band: Metallica (X360); Dead Rising (X360); Mafia Wars (Facebook...DOH!!!!)
XBox Live Gamertag: Vulcan Draggon

pauldovi

You won't be seeing Nehalem products easy to get / cheap until well after launch.

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Croft

The 2.66 ghz version will only be $284.

mrtn400

Interesting. CF 4870/4850 is almost equal to CF4850/4850.

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VulcanDragon

MSRP, though. If quantities are scarce, demand could drive retailers to charge more. That's what happened with the Q9450 to a degree.

And that's part of what I'm mulling over: the risk of scarcity making it hard to obtain a Nehalem for a couple months, vs. the guaranteed availability of a Q9550 today. Plus the risk of it being brand new CPU and X58 motherboard, vs. the tested and proven Penryn and X48. Is a bird in the hand worth two in the bush? Or will Nehalem be so much better than Penryn that I will regret not waiting an extra six to eight weeks?

Regardless, I'm almost certainly going 4870.

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Vulcan Dragon
Core i7 920 @ 3.7 GHz
Currently Playing: Galactic Civilizations II (PC); Call of Duty 4 (PC); Halo 3:ODST (X360); Rock Band: Metallica (X360); Dead Rising (X360); Mafia Wars (Facebook...DOH!!!!)
XBox Live Gamertag: Vulcan Draggon