Nvidia or Radeon?

I'm planning on building a new rig. im going to be ordering these parts:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822136319
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131363
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820227320
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103649

I want to be able to maxout crysis and play any game i play such as CoD4 on highest graphics with AA etc turned on. What video card do you guys think i should put my money into. Hoping not to spend more than 250 dollars.

Are you going for the best of the $250 dollar range now or are you considering upgrading later?

If you want the best now I would get either:
2 x ATI 4830's at $75 dollars each - these beat a single 4870 1GB or a 260 GTX and only cost $150 = cheaper and better. They scale very well (average 80-105% increase).
or for a little more
2 x ATI 4850's at $115-120 each - these will be just as good and sometimes better than the $350 285 GTX. They also scale well and are excellent bang for the buck -we are talking maxout in crysis here pretty much.

If you want to upgrade later I would either get:
ATI 4870 1GB or the 260 GTX -no wait scratch getting any Nvidia cards because you have an ATI 790FX mobo - so stick to AMD graphics- that way you can upgrade to crossfire in the future.
Another option is the 4850X2 - which you can later crossfire with another single 4850 or 4850 x2 - that would be a killer rig man!

Here are some links for further study if you want:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3517
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3518
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3520

Bottom line is this - don't go with Nvidia because you can't SLI on your CF capable 790FX mobo and the single card solutions with Nvidia are not any better that ATI really - so why sacrifice future upgradability?

Hmm... well DX11 is coming out in a years time - so really I think you should look at what games you want to play now and what the cheapest graphics solutions that will let you play these games at the settings you want. Then because you have a relatively new and good AMD mobo you can probably upgrade to a 5800 DX11 compatible card later when they come out in a years time. Just remember that there probably won't be many DX11 games until at least half a year later so it will probably be something like 1 1/2 years to 2 years before an upgrade will be smart. Then look at how much you will want to spend in the future and use that to determine how much you will spend now. (i.e. if you spend $150 dollars now on a 2 4830's instead of $420 on a 4970X2, then you have $250 to spend on the future 5800 cards. But you have to of course consider if 2 x 4830s will be a beefy enough solution for you in the next year or not.

2x 4830 = most bang for your buck
2x 4850 = best performance for around $220

This is assuming your mobo is Xfire

The articles I posted explain the pro's and cons of CF. Depends on what you mean by behave rangers, if you are talking about micro-stutter then this is not an issue really anymore. If you are talking about performance than you are wrong. If you are talking about power usage and heat then you are right - two cards are less efficient and generally require better airflow.

Crossfire is definitely much more stable and scales much better than it did 1-2 years ago - still there are minor issues with a few games. Older games won't always take advantage either - but a single 4830 can usually max out those anyways.

of course there is the issue of having the appropriate mobo and PSU, but you're mobo is great for crossfire (790FX) - its practically built for it and it would almost be a bit silly to not take advantage of it because if you only wanted a single GPU configuration you could just get a 790X/GX

Its an excellent card where price vs performance is considered,

however beware of some downsides on the 4850X2:
1. lots of reviews have deemed it loud - some have solved this by removing the metal housing:
http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/i [...] itstart=10
http://www.overclockersclub.com/re [...] 0x2/16.htm
http://www.hexus.net/content/item. [...] 97&page=12
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/897/10/
2. It is only built by sapphire so you have to use sapphire exclusive drivers

I just read something on the specs for the card that brought up a question mark in my head.

System Requirements: 650 Watt or greater power supply with one 2x3-pin PCIeR power connector and one 2x4-pin PCIeR power connector is required (1K Watt with two 2x3-pin and two 2x4-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode)

Does that mean that i would need a 1000 watt PSU to run this card in dual CF?

well if your going with an AM3 (AMD) socket, then maybe you should go radeon graphics (also AMD)
because you cant sli two nvidia cards with an AM3 socket but you can use crossfire for two radeon cards

amd and nvidia dont get along very well

wrong the 4890 scores under 1FPS less than the 285 and it overclocks further, and thats me putting it up against a card thats a lot more expensive

They both compete with each other. If your board is SLI go NVidia. If it's Crossfire go Radeon. If it doesn't run multiple video cards then go with the best deal for the card that will play your monitors resolution.

Crossfiring a 4850x2 with a single gpu 4850 wouldn't lower the performance of the 4850x2, right?