What upgrade should i get for black friday????

The biggest 2 holding you back would be the screen and the GPU. However, if you went to a HD3870 you will be hampered by the CPU i believe... i would go for a nice new screen and when you get the cash look at maybe new mainboard with penryn or phenom with your HD3850/70 thoughts.

true....i was thinking of waiting for AM3 to make a new build.
Or possibly Nehalem, whichever is best.
but by than i'll probably looking at next gen cards....

I would say get a $100, 19inch monitor from Best Buy and a HD3850 from newegg.com

thats what i wanted to do....but seeing as how quickly monitors go on black friday i'm trying to be optmistic and buy stuff at prices that i see online right now...but if i do get a 100 dollar monitor at best buy than surely i will get the 3850....

Nehalem isn't expected until late 2008. My guess is about October, so that's a long time to wait.

Then again I'm waiting for Nehalem too, but I'll probably upgrade when Penryn comes out 'cause I wanna upgrade my HTPC which has an Athlon XP.

Yeah unless Bulldozer proves to be way better i think my next build will be Intel (my first intel build yay!!!!!)

anyeays lol, which monitor should i be looking at? and what specs? also is widescreen better for gaming than 4:3 ratios?

Widescreen is better for FPS games as you get a bigger field of view... as for the others its up for debate i would think.

Currently 20 or 22" is the best bet with price... i just bought a 24" which requires significantly higher GPU specs to run games. Dell just brought out a cheap 24" if your interested.

Well, I would agree with a couple people in here in saying that a monitor would be a good choice.

On that note, there is something called Cyber Monday(may or may not have heard of it), but it is the Monday after black Friday and is a notorious day for shopping online retailers for cheap prices(all the people at work are surfing to see any deals).

uhh, what kind of motherboard do you have? if you have one that's good at overclocking get yourself a 3870 and a case, then overclock your processor. the 3600+ brisbanes overclock to 3.0 and up on air. if you have any money left over i've seen tuniq towers on sale for 45 bucks at newegg.

LCD Monitor

You need to first be able to see an improvement, before an improvement can even take place.

i was thinking of getting a 19" widescreen from Best buy on black friday for 99.99 (no rebate) and i never knew about cyber monday.

i have a tforce 570 sli and the FSB won't go past 254 (to get an even 2.4 ghz and 2000HT and 800 RAM) so i decided to just OC to 2.0 =[

should i get a new mobo? one that OC's better?
or is my PSU not giving my mobo the power it needs (i have an Aprevia PSU ~520W)

I second the monitor as well. Overall, you will enjoy the bigger screen.

i'm the board you have sounds is a good oc board. have you tried upping the voltage and playing with the ram? just go on google and type in "(your motherboard model) overclocking" and you might be able to find an in depth look at how to overclock your board...its very simple...just start googling and read on.

yeah, your powersupply is kinda weak. apevia doesnt make the best power supplies. if you can, try to upgrade that too.

if you're looking to buy on black friday, go to www.blackfriday.info and see what you find on sale.

I was checking out the monitor in the best buy ad, but i cannot recommend it without seeing any specs.

It seems that this: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8270729&t...

is the one. The only really bad thing I see is 14x9 native res.

Don't forget to factor in the resolution when you're picking a LCD monitor. You'll want to run the monitor at its native resolution and the more pixels there are the less FPS you'll get out of a given video card. Your 6600GT is going to have a tough time going from a 15" at 1024 X 768 (786,432 pixels) to a 19" widescreen at 1680 X 1050 (1,764,000 pixels).

check the deals on http://www.blackfriday.info/
there are some nice LCD with attractive prices and then spend the rest on a new GPU. I have a 22 inch and can recommend that size.

Best advice of the lot.
Your processor is fine.
I see so many posts "oh, your processor is gonna bottleneck this or bottleneck that"
It is pure BS.
Any processor that is a least an AMD 64, is plenty strong enough to run the best video cards out there. (sure you may get a few more frames with a faster CPU) What most people don't realize is that if you have an LCD, you are LIMITED to either 60 or 70 frames per second anyway, the monitor cannot refresh any faster. Any mid-range processor coupled to a good mid to high-end video card will do at least that, at decent resolutions and good eye candy turned on, but thats a whole other discussion.
Games are starting to be multi-threaded, but not to the point yet you absolutely need a dual core processor.

To enjoy the new video card, your are going to need a new monitor.
Heck even if you don't do anything else, you need a new monitor.

Well guys i didn't get the monitor on friday...................so now im counting on cyber monday to bring me the spoils.....

also my dad offered to buy me stuff for my computer....i was thinking the 3850 and a new case, i'll buy the monitor myself. and my sister is giving me money for a new psu thermaltake 500w.

sound good?

I would get the nicest cheap amd processor you can find.. 3850 will definitely be held back by your cpu.