I'm building a new mid ranged computer for playing a few games. I will not be playing any First person shooters whatsoever. Because rarely anyone benchmarks video cards with MMORPGS, I'm not sure how much video power I'll need. I currently play Everquest 2, which is one of the most intensive mmo's on the market, with it and Vanguard being up there as well.

the pc will have 2 gigs of system ram. I'm trying to decide on either the radeon 3850 with 256mb or 512mb, or the 3870 with 512mb.

If its going to be overkill to have 512mb or the 3870.. I'll stick with the 3850 256mb.. But I want to have room to be able to play all the new mmo's coming out.. ie Age of Conan, Warhammer.

I just don't want to spend extra money for power that will never be utilized.

What do u mean it has more Numbers ?

The 3850 256MB isn't going to to as well if you want to use high-res textures (or go up much higher than 1440x900 for your res). That being said, the 512MB in either the 3850 or the 3870 is the way to go. The 3870 will last you longer, but the 512MB 3850 is probably all you need for thos MMO's.

Target price is probably ~$140-200.

yeah, the 3850 512 was looking good..

but I didn't know how much more performance for mmo's the 3870 would give me.. its not much more expensive.. so if its going to be a huge improvement then, I'd go that route.

The 3850 512 is probably the best choice for your applications.

I believe (if you can find it) the HIS 3850 512MB IceQ3 is probably the fastest stock 3850 you'll find. May be worth checking out if the price is reasonable.

I play mostly Guild Wars, at 1680x1050. I'm using an Asus EAH3850 with 512MB of RAM. I have most settings maxed (but no AA), and get 60 FPS most of the time; that's my refresh rate.

Always go with 512 vram+++. Almost every current game and any that are coming out will eat 512. 256 is simply not enough anymore. Maybee 4 years ago.

Take a look at some of the 8800GT deal threads on these forums. $191 (shipped) for a card that can blow the pants off of either 38xx card.

For future games it might be worth getting the 3870. Also it has a dual slot cooler which can help keep your case temperatures down.

-mcg

Good point. Some 3870s have fan issues though. Diamond in particular seems to be a bad card.

Hmm... I see some of the 512MB 3850s have dual slot coolers too.

-mcg

Yeah, a select few. Some of them are pretty nice too, and nearly outperform the 3870 when properly clocked.

Indeed, the 8800GT is usually a better performer than the 3850 or the 3870, but I wouldn't say it "blows the pants off" of them. The 3850 in particular usually runs at just a handful of frames per second lower than the GT, and in some cases a little higher. In DX10, in some cases, however the 3850 does take a hit in frames, but new drivers should fix that.

If you can afford it, the 8800GT is an awesome card, if not, the 3850/3870 are similarly great as well.

My rule of thumb is to get the best you can with what you are willing to spend. If you are looking for the best performance for the price, the 3850 is the way to go. If you can slurge for the 3870 I'd go for the 8800GT instead because it performs better at the same price point. If you can afford the 8800GTS then go for that. It's not that you won't use the power of whatever card you get, you will just be able to up the eye candy with the better cards and have room to grow at the same time. The power won't go to waste. Tetris on a GTX is a waste, but not current games.

Uhh.. until you turn eyecandy on... then the GT kicks the urine out of the 38xx series.

That and, check my thread... you get a free copy of the witcher w/the GT: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] us-witcher

What do you get w/the 38xx series? That same feeling of resentment you get after spending years w/the same person that you know you should have gotten rid of a long time ago for someone better.

EDIT: oh and... happy valentine's day