3850 512mb vs. 3870

9600GT - better than both and $180 on newegg.

I know that the 3870 performs better than the 3850 and seeing that you have reached the limit of the 3850, the 3870 should be better if it is OCed.
As far as the 'worth it', that is a judgment call. $30 for a better card that with better drivers could actually increase in performance, I would say yes.

No, I mean the fact that I get overscan issues on my main monitor (HDTV) while using Nvidia cards which can be correct using their "Resize my Desktop" feature, but that gives me a funky resolution of 1219x688. When I switched over to this card, I had no such problem and was able to display in 1280x720 with no problem.

I would have got the 8800GT that my friend was going to sell me for $160 if I didn't have this issue, but I settled for the 2900Pro instead and then got the 3850 512mb and gave my brother the 2900Pro.

I was going to return the 3850 512mb and pay the $20 dollars difference for the 3870 if it was worth it. I do agree though, the new Nvidia Control Panel is terrible and I don't think there's away around it in Vista.

Well I'm actually running full 720p with my ATI card, which I wasn't able to do with the Nvidia card. I didn't mind running the resolution that much, but a lot of games and programs don't support the resolution. And more pixels are always better.

I'm happy with the 3850 512mb, I just wish it was a better overclocker, which with the $20 dollars more I hoped to accomplish with the 3870. I love to overclock and after doing a 850/2000 OC on the 2900Pro, the 3850 512mb's 750/2052 was a little disappointing since the stock wasn't much lower than that, at least on the core.

It seems like too much of a hassle I guess though. I need to find a way to get this baby to overclock further.

Has anyone ever noticed that no matter the question about ATI someone will fly in and jack the post to tout Nvidia. This post is a perfect example. The OP is asking about a 3850 to a 3870. And some guy blows off the question and posts about the 9600gt. The OP tries to counter and asks again. Dude must work for Nvidia? You just know he doesn't have a 9600 and doesn't have the ATI he's just blowing smoke. Probably has some old 6xxx series card. Why all the highjacking here in the fourms? For the OP depending on your resolution, if you want to go higher get the 3870, both the 3850 and 3870 are good cards IMHO.

Damn...if that is not a 'shut the **** up', then I don't know what is.
To the OP, I think that you will be happier with the 3870 than the OCed 3850 because of its greater potential and hopefully it would get slightly better with drivers.

The 3870 is a sweet card. They OC very well and dont run as hot as the Nvidia options. The problem is realisticly if you are running the 2850 at 1680x1050 or under there is little difference in performance. You will probably get a few frames a tad better detail. The difference is not hudge but its respectable. Honestly if you are messing around with 2 displayes you are in the territory of the X2. ATI has much better multiple display capability then Nvidia for sure and ATI is the only card supporting dx10.1.