I just built my new PC (got the video card today). Here are the specs of my upgrade:

• Quad core AMD 2.5 Ghz (black addition, so it's unlocked for overclocking)
• 4 Gig of ram
• Fast 500 Gig HD
• 450+650 Was PSU (the 650 is just for video cards)
• ATI 4850
• Biostar Mobo, that was free with the CPU

I had everything else, including a 30" dell that does 2560x1600.

I spent a total of $750 for the upgrade, put it all together with no issues at all. This thing is crazy fast! I can run Crysis at 1200x800 4xAA with everything on High, and it's smooth as silk. I pumped it up to 2560x1600 just to see if it would puke, and it still ran at what looked like 10 fps. It ran smother then my old setup did with everything on low at 800x600.

With this rig, I will probably only return to consoles when exclusives come out (like Gears 2, FFXIII, and LBP).

I now have a ton of games I need to get for my PC. It's like a new console just launched! :)

Im so glad you like it! I've heard of Phenoms running @3.2ghz or more on air. So I think the later iterations are much better overclockers than the early ones which were reviewed. But your motherboard isn't as good, but I predict you'd be able to easily clock it up a few hundred MHZ by just changing a number. No sweat.

Oh yea, if you want more performance out of that 4850 - you can stick an aftermarket cooler on it, because the single slot is quite hot and overclock it with good results. It scales VERY well with overclocking so its got some juice up its sleeve.

Oh yea remember this 8xMSAA doesn't cost much more performance on ATI cards than 4xMSAA so you could consider bumping it up to 8x if you like/notice the effect.

Enjoy! Im glad I could be of help.

The funny thing is the two best games for PC this year will not push the hardware (SC2/Spore). =P Warhammer Online will look pretty though.

There are a lot of games that will push the Hardware. I am thinking of playing Conan, and I have not played Crysis, so that's new to me.

Oh, and I am replaying Mass Effect on the PC, and I can play it with max settings. The load times are under a half a second as well.

I have not played a PC game released in the last year, so there are a lot of new things out there for me :)

And thanks Squilliam! (He helped me spec out my hardware)

There are a lot of games that will push the hardware, but the best two games this year will be Starcraft 2 and Spore and Blizzard doesn't push hardware and EA already announced specs for Spore and they aren't high. Conan doesn't have DX10 yet so I don't know how hard that will push your hardware, if you are even running Vista and with that powerful of hardware it wouldn't be that big a deal to deal with the bloatware that Vista is.

yeah i also recently build my pc,and play more games on it,but i still play on consoles

Brilliant. May i recomend
the witcher

As long as it has C or D stepping it is great with the overclocking.

I am running XP. I loose some ram (it only sees 3.5 Gig), but I doubt I will miss it anytime soon.

DX10 is a joke. Crysis on very high in DX9 looks the same. I have seen very few areas where it adds visual qualities, (smoke in BioShock is one), but for the most part, I don't mind loosing those features if it means I don't have to run that POS OS.

I wish MS would make DX10 for XP, (I know if will never happen).

I hear that's great. It's my next purchase, after Crysis.