I found an excellent deal on a motherboard / Athlon II combo for $178

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.470527

Much better motherboard.

Also found this ram for $85 which is faster and comes with a $20 MIR

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227558

ITs true that you DON'T need a 200 dollar card and 180 dollar cpu. But if you don't spend on that you may as well stick with consoles.

The set up Squil posted wouldn't be able to run Crysis or Metro 2033 at 1080p and medium settings and have more than 30 fps.  No one wants to play PC games at medium setting and 30 fps...High detail and 60 fps FTW! :)

http://www.guru3d.com/article/inno3d-geforce-gtx-460-oc-review/14

What card can play Metro at 1080P @30FPS at full settings? I can't see more than 2.

However gamer quality is doable at 30FPS at 1080P

http://www.guru3d.com/article/inno3d-geforce-gtx-460-oc-review/16

Wow I never could have imagined Metro 2033 was so demanding on the hardware!

But it's good. Another reason for me to upgrade soon.

Also, what the heck is AMD doing. Why aren't they dropping the price of the 5830, 5850 and 5870 already? They're getting slain by Nvidia and the GTX 460.

They're probably still selling all that they are making. Once supply eases up some more im sure the prices will come down. Remember they can't make as many as they want to anyway... Once the new 40nm fab comes online im sure the prices of the graphics cards will drop $50 pretty quickly.

Uhmm.. it's happened before like you say, supply constraints. Funny it can be the case almost a year after launch though.

I bet you are right. Good to know.

Yeah, full setting in MEtro 2033 is asking for trouble even if you have the Fermi 480.

You turn off AA, put detail on high(not very high) and maybe set resolution to 1680x1050 if need be and you should be getting high 30s in resolution with a GTX460 or an ATI equivalent.

I have found a perfect set up with a GTX295 where everything is still set to high, no AA and my res is 1700x900 something and I am getting 50-80 fps depending on if its indoor, outdoor, mask on, mask off...etc.

In any case, anyon getting a PC should get as fast of a CPU as possible and a good DX11 card. A lot of games, applications and emulators are not quad core optimized and when you have a 2.6 ghz dual core CPU, it really doesn't work well.

Unless you have a 3.4 ghz or higher you can say bye bye to Dolphn Wii emulator for example :)

Yeah, this. They are supply constrained so price drops wouldn't increase sales.

But wait for Southern Islands (HD6xxx probably) in October. Then prices will fall into line. Or maybe not, since Nvidia will have no answer until Q2 next year.

Personally I find that heavy graphics settings don't usually add signficantly to games. I have a 5870 but I switch between that and a 5750 for the same games and it hardly changes a thing for me. Generallly now I just run fraps for 5 mins and tune the settins so I get 50 or so FPS in the early part of the game and leave it at that.

Since you know ATI like the back of your hand, do you know if they have a 3D Vision like product coming int he near future?

I will be going 3D surround in the next few months...tri gtx480s, 3 monitors...the works. If ATI has something similar down the pipe I may wait...