Lots of good info guys.. Ok so I have re evaluated a few things since reading your comments.
Its a wise thing to consider that the 4800 series has long been discontinued, and as hard as it is to find one now, it will be even harder to find one 6 months or so from now. My only option would be to plan on lucking out and finding a lightly used one which is not a good plan at all.
Also, while I was leaning towards the 4890, from the benchmarks shown of the games i want to play, it is not 40 dollars faster, especially considering the increased noise/power draw.
Here is my only reservation about the 5770. Now I know that Juniper and Cypress' shaders aren't as strong as the 4800's sp versus sp but that's ok as Juniper can clock up at least 100mhz higher. I am just apprehensive of going with a 128-bit memory bus.
I have known this since I was in middle school, to stay away from this castrated half-bus. Besides 128 bit being the best available when i got my Geforce 3, all of my video cards, 9700 pro, 6800 GT, x850xt, and my current x1950xt have 256-bit memory busses. Has gddr5 made 256 bit busses irrlevant for my 1680 resolution? If so then I think I am ready to pull the trigger.
Another good point someone brought up is that while the 4890 is def. faster, its rated at 190watts TDP versus 110watts TDP for the 5770 and thats a very large difference when considering crossfire. I have an antect Truepower 530 which would probably limit me to 2 x 5770 and still have room for my CPU oc and a few hard drives.
I mean this has just been way too difficult finding what I believe to be a good deal. The market sucks. Period!
I bought my x1950xt for around 130 bucks around early 2007. I think it had cost 300+ when it was new, around 6 months earlier. It was one of the fastest cards around for an awesome price, from newegg ofcourse. And for that amount of money I have enjoyed countless hours of fun and memory with my friends playing battlefield 2, quake wars, total war games and a few others.
I may not have been able to have had all settings cranked up and yeah I would have liked to have max eye candy but for a college student making 8.50/hr I mean damn, its just not worth it to me to pay more than 130 or so for my replacement video card, hence my crossfire plan for the future.
Whew, sorry about all that but this decision process is really tedious/entertaining haha.
On a side note, any one here on SC2 beta?
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