if 3870 and 8800gt cost the same

Is your motherboard Crossfire or SLI capable?

Coming from an x1600Pro ATI card I can say that I have not noticed any difference in "picture quality" that most people complain about with Nvidia. My 8800GT looks just as good, if not better than my old ATi card. And I cant compare it to the 3870 personally but from the dozens of reviews Ive read, the 8800GT performs better period. Maybe doesnt win every game, but with AA and AF enabled it wins way more often than not and thats what really matters. Plus with my HR03-GT, I have my 8800GT oc'd to 730/1025, and thats higher than most sites where the 8800GT beats up on all of ATIs offerings. Best $259 Ive spent on my pc in a while.

ill go with 8800GT

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/607/5/ hd3870 wins some lose some

8800GT 512MB over HD3870 for me. HD3870 over 8800GT 256MB for sure though.

Keep your eye out for bestbuy to get the 3870 in stock. They have the 3850 for $160, and the 3870 will be $215 when it comes in stock.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspag [...] 4053242087
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspag [...] 4053242019

Strongly agree with gwolfman.

But if you want to consider saving $50, get two 3850s. Crossfire with 3850 is like a beautiful dream. It's a great deal in terms of bang for buck. I suggest you check out this link.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/607/8/

Also make sure you have a good PSU before buying a GPU.

Word.

I'm curious as to what you mean by this... how is the 3870 better than the 8800 GT for non-gaming apps?

Well, that's why I asked. In Photoshop or HD video editing, it shouldn't make a lick of difference.

The only place where the 8800 GT might be worse is playing back HD video - like an HD-DVD or Blu-ray - and that's only in Windows XP.
The 8x00 series will ACCELERATE video in XP, but they don't apply image quality enhancements like noise reduction. In Vista, the 8x00 series will apply image quality enhancements to HD video.

Other than that, the 8800 GT should be just as good as the 3870 in non-gaming apps.

I would say 8800GT. I bought an aftermarket cooler for it for $17 the AC Accelero S2. I then overclocked it to 700/1950. Runs amazing. Only problem I have to say is the SHSF on the 8800GT is garbage. The 3870 packs a nice punch but not for the $270 gouged price that it is at most places.

Already picked the GT at a higher price, so why shouldn't I pick it if they were both at the same price

I have a CF board and fan noise is an issue for me... but I would rather have a noisy sytem than a fried system... the 3870 also oc's pretty good anyway... HIS Hightech also makes great cards with awesome coolers (36C idle right now on X1950PRO) and they have ATi only it seems

have been an Nvida person for years and have no problem with them. One thing I do not understand it that the ATI 3580 has faster Mhz Clocks and 320 Unified Stream Processors Vs. the 8800gt slower Mhz clocks and only 112 Stream Processors and it shows to be slower, Why it that? It has so many more Processors and faster clocks. Why is it slower? I have a 8800gt by the way and it is faster than my two 7900gs running in sli setup. Runs Bioshock really well, as well as Crysis.

Crossfire because it tends to scale better and has better mobo choices. 2 3870s on an X38 board would be a pretty solid setup. If AMD ever gets Phenom together you will have the option of going that route as well.

The only "real" advantage that I see with the 3870 is that if you had a crossfire capable mobo you could later on add another card that wouldn't be another 3870. Can't really do that with the Nvidia cards, as they have to be identical. So the ATI cards are sort of infinitely upgradeable. If you're just a 1 card kind of a guy I'd probably get the 8800GT unless you don't care too much about max FPS in which case I might actually suggest the 3850 512mb and OC the hell out of it. They are usually $50 cheaper that the 3870 and when OC'd perform about the same. In the end though for the money the 8800GT is unbeatable, unless you just don't have the money.

**edited to add the word get**