Getting a gaming rig. Buy or Build?

[Squilliam]

Epoch said:

IllegalPaladin said:

Depends on what you want. The Radeon 5870 is $100 more than the Radeon 5850 and the combo you listed gives you a $25 discount compared to buying the Radeon 5870 and i7 860 on their own.

Here's a link to Guru3d's review of the Radeon 5850. The page it's on is the first of the benchmarks. If you scroll down you can see a graph on each game benchmark page with the results of numerous graphics cards (including the 5870) at 1920x1200 resolution and 8xAA. 

As for the power supply, I think that would be enough unless you planned on having dual GPU's.

Wow, for the price I'd be better off with the 5850 for sure.  Then If I need more power later, I can just buy a second and put it in Crossfire.  Thanks again man.

Galaki, my budget is around $1200.

Remember the 1156 pin i7/i5 motherboard / cpus come with very few PCI-E lanes, not enough to do crossfire/sli and especially not if they use USB 3.0. You're better off with either an AM3 based AMD system or a 1366 pin i7 system if you want both crossfire and USB 3.0.

Edit: This is a good combo:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.325941

MSI motherboard, Phenom 965 and XFX 5850 for $650 with $55 off for combo.