personally, I would go with an ATI Radeon 3850...save yourself a little dough and not risk a big drop in performance..it beats an 8800GT at higher res..they are around $190.....or if you wanna rival the 8800gts, get a 3870...it's almost the exact same specs with the gts (512mb version) beating out the 3870 by very little...however you will spend much more for a 8800..therefore IMHO making the 3870 the way to go for around $240 compared to an 8800 anywhere from $270-$300+ but hey..like we all keep saying..depends on how much money you are willing to fork out
but just showing him how it stacks up...
totally agree on that one...just showing him what's out there..after all, he's the one that's going to decide what he's going to buy
EDIT>>>
Ok..finally..here's my two builds...one intel, one amd.....here's the intel
MOBO @ $120
CPU @ $190
RAM @ $37
HDD @ $85
GPU @ $190
OPTICAL @ $34
Total Price (w/o case and PSU but with all shipping and rebates included)= $656
Here's my AMD Build
MOBO @ $135
CPU @ $160
RAM - Same as above
HDD - Same
GPU - Same
OPT - Same
Total Price = $641
And then like I said above, some alternate vid cards (if you had the money) would definitely be the 8800GTS 512mb as choice number one @ $270-$300+, and at a close second the ATI 3870 @ $240
And then I don't know your plans for cases and psu's are..here's a really good one with a 500w psu included..I have the model before this one (flat front, one less 120mm fan) and the PSU is still going strong
This case is ~100 bucks with shipping included w/ 500W PSU
Here's a
case by itself and a
PSU by themselves..but combo price for these two is = ~$146 w/ship...so basically you are paying 46 bucks for a little bit better PSU..but I really don't know what kind of case you are looking for so that'd all be up to you..
Hope this helps
Oh, and btw..IMO Intel wins on this one for me with a slight edge, simply out of personal preference. AMD's tend to be harder to OC on stock cooling and run a bit hotter, and intel seems to run a little cooler and have some overhead to OC on stock cooling....just my personal opinion here though..we don't need a fanboy war! I have no doubt that either of these setups would be splendid!