Well, you certainly can hook up a computer to a TV.  Even play with a controller, too.

And can you play Portal Prelude?  Crysis?  Starcraft 2?  Every platform has its exclusives.  And frankly, most PC gamers are less than impressed by the 3 Halo's you mentioned, because we've played, you know, GOOD first person shooters.  :-o

PC > Console for FPS and RTS, mostly due to the control scheme (and history).  I prefer console for most everything else, though.

nightsurge said:

I looked up what you said, and it does appear that the HD 3850 just barely pulls off with playable fram rates provided no AA or AF is enabled.  29 FPS average and 20 minimum.

Still can't match the performance on 1080p, though

And I am still waiting on someone to find me a retail PC for $500 that has a good enough setup for gaming equal to 360/PS3 levels.

This is getting tiresome. I have the game set for 4X AA and 15X AF. The resokution is slightly off of 1080P, but it runs a second monitor simulataneously that is 1024X768. I am reasonable certain that will tax my computer far more than a simple bump to 1080p will. I am looking for a way to get the exact FPS for you so I can give you the right numbers. You are simply wrong.

 My set-up isn't retail, but without the monitor it would have been below $500 slightly. This was a year ago so it would be a bit cheaper now to build an identical system. I suppose the reason no one takes you up on your challenge though is you are just making up facts as you go along. You can claim to know more all you want, but I have first hand experience with this rig that says you are talking out your ass.

Then I find that very hard to believe you are getting above 20 FPS for those settings.  Download FRAPS and run it while playing.

I do not have first hand experience with your exact card, but I have experience with a wide set of other video cards and hardware very similar.  Perhaps it is just Fallout 3 is no where near as demanding as most recent games are on the GPU.  I just had an HD 4830 and it could barely handle all my games (Red Alert 3, Crysis, Far Cry 2, Fear 2, and more) on 1680x1050 and it is much better than your video card.  The rest of my system was nearly identical to yours except my CPU was a dual core Kuma overclocked to 3.6GHz.

No one is taking me up on my challenge because there is no "retail" PC that exists which can do what I say.  Anyone can go build a PC for sub $500 to do what a PS3/360 can do, but to buy one at retail like you buy a PS3/360 you will not find anything comparable for $500.

And I'm not making up facts.  I was making my claims based on similar hardware I had used and on all the benchmarks I had seen.  The one for your card and Fallout 3 showed only 29FPS at 1680x1050 with no AA/AF and dropped even lower once those were enabled.

Unfortunately your argument has no merit seeing how you cannot buy a PC at retail that costs $400 and plays games anywhere near the level of the 360 or PS3.

Not many people shop around for weeks to find the most disclosed deals to make such a budget custom built PC.  Sure many people build their own PCs, but many more just buy them at retail and those never have good enough video cards for $400 or less.

Not for $400, but you can find a gaming PC for $500 at retail. A friend of mine just bought a $600 gaming laptop which easily plays better than any console.

But it doesn't matter because all the extra money you put initially in your PC will later be saved from buying the much cheaper PC games, and not having to pay for playing for online.

     I could be wrong, but I highly doubt you can find a $500.00 pc at Best Buy, Radio Shack, or Wal~Mart that will blow through Crysis on its highest settings.  If you have the technical know how, you might be able to build one, but I'm pretty sure most people don't know how to do so.