I am in a tough situation...last week I bought a BFG 8800GT oc...and found out the hard way that it has problems working with my antec power supply..TPQ-850watt. I was getting the message that the card was underpowered, I tried every kind of different connection that I could and still had the problem so I returned the card. Now I don't know what vidcard I should look at, I dont do any heavy gaming but I also do want to play UT3, Crysis, COD4...Would a 3870 be good enough for me? I dont really want to out the $400 and change for a 3870x2 and I also dont want to wait for March for any newer cards to come out...What would everyones suggestions be...I have a budget of $300-$350

System Specs:

BFG 650i Ultra
2 gig Mushkin
e6750 cpu
Antec TQP 850watt
Vista or XP...I run either

The 8800GTS 512MB is a good video card. Runs cool and quiet, OCs very well.

OK...from what I have read...the 8800 series cards have a problem working with certian power supplies...mine being one of them...so from what I understand...any 8800 series card is out of the question...Im not willing to take the chance of it working or not working..

Yeah, I heard things like that about Toughpower PSUs and 8800-series cards. Didn't know the Antec does that too.

Well, if you exclude the nVidia 8800 series, the best cards in the world right now are HD 3870X2 and HD 3870. They behave about the same in Crysis, because the game is not (yet) optimized for Crossfire. Get the HD 3870.

Thats what I was thinking...the local Microcenter has a Viper Radeon HD 3870 512MB GDDR4 PCI-E Video Card for $199.99...that actually leaves with with and extra 100 or so to get somthing else..(I have no idea what though...lol)

3870 should work fine as an alternative for 8800gt...

$199.99 is a very nice price for an HD 3870.

Well, if you've got extra cash and need ideas, just start a thread. I'm sure it will be VERY popular.

Maybe a new and fast hard disk, like the WD7500AAKS? OK, it's more like $155. Maybe more RAM?

New case?

The case I have is only about a month old..lol...More Ram...I am only running 32bit windows...so anything over 2 (or 3) gig isnt recognized...

NO!

The HD3870 is a good idea, but NOT Diamond! The fan speed can't be reliably controlled (even with multiple thresholds and launch items set in Rivatuner), their tech support is UTTERLY lame, you can't even sign up for downloads on the Diamond web site, and last time I checked, Diamond was still not listed in the dropdowns for partners on the ATI page. ATITools doesn't recognize the card either; says no ATI product installed.
Btw, the fan speed issue is not unique to Diamond. There's an article on Guru3D about it. That's why I downloaded Rivatuner, but found it doesn't reliably work either. I dropped back to an Asus EAH3850, and have no problems with Rivatuner on it.

Ouch! Maybe that's why it's so cheap...

3870 will be a super cool card in your rig, buy quality that u can clock with the idea of crossfire in the future when extra pixel pushing is required.

I ended up getting a VisionTek 3870X2 for $389.99....So far I am happy with the preformance..(autocad) and Ill keep putting it through its paces over the next few days

Nice, that's a good deal. Life-time warranty too.

The problem I am running into now..Is when I go to view a fullscreen video on youtube or whatever...It wont let me...?