HD 4830 v. 4850 v 9800 GT XXX

Go with the ASUS HD 4850 TOP, either that or save some more and get a HD4870  

What PSU do you have? Assuming good quality, you'll need 450W for the 4850 and 500W for the 4870.

In the past hour I've been playing with a 4830 that I got for a relatives birthday. It won't play Crysis very good unless it's on lower resolutions and at medium settings at best. It does play the small bit of COD4 that I played quite well at a6x10 and high or max settings..... can't remember. ........ Having said that, these friggin ATI cards still can't play Medal of Honor Spearhead. Game won't load and comes up with some error. Same thing happened with my 4870 card. Been waiting for the miraculous driver update that's going to cure it but good thing I'm not holding my breath. Dump the idea of getting the ATi product and select the 9800gt......... hopefully the few games my relative plays run fine........ Oblivion...... anybody...... ?

After digging around for price/performance for what I do and I opted for that Asus 4850 and it's been treating me a lot better than the 3850 (512) I had  . I'm happy with how Crysis Warhead runs @ 1360x768 with 4x edge detect AA and mostly enthusiast settings.

And it runs just fine on my year old 380w Antec Earthwatt with an Athlon X2 4200+ OC'd to 2.8, 4 sticks of RAM, and 2 DVD burners.

I'd say don't worry too much about overclocks. You'll overclock it relatively easily. The 4850 is worth the extra money, but it's all about how much you wish to spend. They are all fine cards and if you want to safe money, you'll not be very disappointed in the end.

Thank you all for your opinions, I think I'll be going with the 4850. Seems like it's a solid favorite all around and the price difference isn't too bad.

Hard to answer the questions unless you specify your monitor and resolution. Also games vs. productivity. For games on a 22 in monitor at 1680 X 1050 the ATI 4850 GPU's are perfect. The 9800 gtx will work fine too. For productivity and games on small monitors with low res, the 4830 is perfect. And for Crisis on larger monitors (24, 26, etc.) the 4870, 2 X 4850 in crossfire, etc. is needed. Many people spend too much on a GPU. Answer these questions and then spend what is needed.

Ok, monitor is 22" and capable of 1680x1050. However, and this is a big however, for now my cpu is an old athlon 64 3500+. I'm looking to replace it next but since it's a 939 socket I need to replace the motherboard as well and that opens up replacing everything else...which I will get around to doing. But I want to start with the gpu with the idea of building a much better system around it.

4850 +1

HD4850 > HD4830 > 9800GT

4850 +1

For Crysis go for the xfx 9800 GT. Can run at 700/1000/1700 f(750/1065/1806 máx OC on reviews). Ati 4830 run better all games but for Crysis much better Nvidia or 4850.