Best Bang-For-The-Buck Video Card

[newcement]

I was on this site several months ago gathering info to build my own computer. I'm back again and this time my friends want to build a computer. They have almost the exact budget I had: $800 for a complete system, w/o monitor, mouse, and keyboard.

My big question is this: What is the best bang-for-the-buck video card right now?

My system has a 6800gs, is that still the way to go?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

edit: This is going to be a gaming build.

 

[curtcheese64]

Go with the 7600GT.

 

[kaname]

^^^ He's right, 7600GT

 

[BennyV04988]

i can't believe that evga is so cheap. well the 7900gt for that matter too. 260?! they bring out a new faster version, so what do they do? sell it for more? nope, they just drop the rest. incredible...

 

[newcement]

So this is the proposed set-up at this point:

Video Card: evga GeForce 7600gt $155
Processor: AMD Opteron 144 Venus (sock. 939) $171
Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo4-F (sock. 939) $80
Memory: 1GB (512MB x 2) $80
Hard Drive: 200gb or so $60
Disc Drive: DVD Burner $40
Case: Personal Preference $30
Power Supply: Antec SmartPower 2.0 500watts $50
Operating System: Windows XP $95
Total: $761

Any changes that would keep them under the $800 mark? I'm thinking of having them bump down the cpu and bump the vid card up to 7900gt. Sound good?

edit: I failed to mention earlier that this is mainly a gaming build.

 

[hmammen]

i like your choice of CPU.....cant go wrong with opteron. everything looks good. maybe you can up your ram to 2 gigs??

 

[Nitestick]

i think he should just be a little more patient and get a 7900gt and 2gb of ram if possible

 

[trimmin]

i think he should just be a little more patient and get a 7900gt and 2gb of ram if possible

i would agree with that.

 

[SHAWN]

7600GT is the new 6600GT

 

[newcement]

i think he should just be a little more patient and get a 7900gt and 2gb of ram if possible

Well, if he's willing to stretch the budget a little bit, he could still get the opteron and bump the vid card up to the 7900gt. The total would come to $836 and he could always add a gig of ram down the road.

Is the opteron a good cpu? Because he's wanting to get a better cpu instead of getting a better video card...