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and when would be a good time to buy this? after christmas? or whenever?

Just shop around and wait for good deals, the pre-overclocked bundles on overclockers.co.uk are usually nice but you should cross-reference the prices elsewhere blabla.

Usually I like to buy from 3 or 4 places to get the cheapest PC, my PC is still £100 more expensive to build today if you take the graphics card out of the equation because i buy the cheapest of each component from reputable sellers taking postage into account.

http://www.novatech.co.uk
http://www.scan.co.uk
http://www.ebuyer.co.uk
http://www.overclockers.co.uk
http://www.dabs.com

The above are all places i recommend from personal experience, though dabs didn’t have a telephone number last time i checked and all returns and queries were done by email and forms, however when i had to return RAM it was perfect so i still plus them :) Something you might consider important though if you are in a hurry :)

Novatech is my personal favourate because they have a online chat aswell as telephone.

Ye its good to shop around. I’d pretty much +1 all those places nvc suggested. However probably not a good idea to wait too long. If you wait for ‘x’ thing thats just about to come out or go down in price you’ll be waiting forever.

I have very good experience with Scan and overclockers (probably spent about £3k between the two building PC’s for people).

actiually, i’d wait untill the new year at least, but this only goes for the graphics cards really, don’t know what is happening on the CPU side of things

the reason for this is because of the new graphics cards that ati is putting out, the HD5870x2 will come out some time soon (don’t pin me down on it) which will probably put even more pressure on nvidia

although nvidia has said that they won’t lower their prices on responce to ATI, in a few months this might change due to the immense pressure on them from the cheaper and more powerfull ATI hardware

Wat? 5 series? Unnecessary and expensive.

Basically the same reason for not ever bothering with LGA1366, locks you into the expensive upgrade path, and just aint needed.

Wait for christmas and grab a good deal then, but if you CAN get it now, just do it.
(Ofc I have to say get the one I specced up ;) lol)

the Real diffrence between retail and OEM is that with retail, you can keep installing windows using that key but at OEM means that when you change the motherboard, the OEM no longer functions, and is worthless

thats the reason an OEM costs alot less then a retail

Wat? 5 series? Unnecessary and expensive.

Basically the same reason for not ever bothering with LGA1366, locks you into the expensive upgrade path, and just aint needed.

Wait for christmas and grab a good deal then, but if you CAN get it now, just do it.
(Ofc I have to say get the one I specced up ;) lol)

Why would it lock you in an expensive upgrade path?
PCI-E is PCI-E and afaik that’s the only real standard that’s used for graphic cards.

I can’t see how the HD5850 is a waste of money, it offers great performance for a decent prize.

Sorry, upgrade path comment was irrelevant to the graphics card. :P

As for the price, 200 quid for the absolute best?

The absolute best is unnecessary, and there’s not even anything dx11 enabled out yet.

Cheapest 5850? about 200 quid, 205 at scan :<

150/160 is probably the max I would classify as a "decent price"

Other quotes go here

Sorry, upgrade path comment was irrelevant to the graphics card. :P

As for the price, 200 quid for the absolute best?

The absolute best is unnecessary, and there’s not even anything dx11 enabled out yet.

Cheapest 5850? about 200 quid, 205 at scan :<

150/160 is probably the max I would classify as a "decent price"

Don’t know the exact rates of £ vs €, but over here it’s about €220.
If you have say dual 24″ monitors (or even a single one) it’s always nice to have a decent gpu.

I’m not saying the HD48x0 series are shit, they are still good, but why would you buy a gpu from a previous generation, while the new ones have better performance and aren’t much more expensive.