I had tested many hardwares during all this years from K6 till phenom and MMx 233 till Q6600.From S3 savage8 till 3870 X2.Let me talk about my experience:

Old days:

1. K8 was faster than any P4 per it's price all the time.(maybe clock is not a good factor because it was a big clock gap between K8 and P4)

2.Ati 9xxx were faster than Fx5xxx(and most of 6xxx) from nVidia (not per price sometimes)

3.Am2 was a big failure from AMD because: DDR performance was twice faster than DDR2 .(specialy in dual mode)
and If AMD did not switched to am2, today we had DDR1000(should Perforemed like DDR3 2000!)
 Dual channel performance has  a big gap between  DDR2/3 and DDR.
 this is where users switched from good performed 939 to Intel Core2 .
 But not because they do not have any feature on their M/boards ,because
 they could not find 939 X2 CPUs easily ,then DDR ram went to fazed out.
 So AM2 is slower than 939!(per clock)... you can see an 2.6 ghz opteron dual core is faster than x2 5200 (windsor) with same cores ,with same chipset ,but the slower is AM2.Why? because DDR2 800 <= DDR 400!!!

today :

4.HD 3870 seems to perform slower than 8800gt BUT:

  a.Picture quality (3d maps) are in better quality if you take picture from games?!
   It means 3870 can perform even faster   than 8800gt while the quality [SEEMs] them same
(but not the same in game  option!)
   
   b.If you change the EXE file of your game for example from Crysis.exe to Crysis2.exe the game perform slower
than before in nVidia.(depends of the driver) means nVidia cheats!
While all options are high but picture quality is lower than ATI 3870.
   
   c. 3870 is a RV chip it means it is a VALUE product.
      3850 performs 80% faster than 8600GTS!
      while 3850 is targetting 8600gts,3870 X2 targetting 8800 ultra,and it is a better product while quality of game details differences.(ATI is better at same detail)
   
   d.SLI from nvidia only can do 50% faster even with 3 card the third card is wasted!! But crossfire is making 80% boost for two and more han 200% in quad CrossFire.So this is where ATI helps AMD,but not phenom!
   
   e.Still there are many many bug reports from nvidia 88xx and 9600 cards.this can be reduced by changing drivers but there is no garranty for it.This means I go ATI these days!

5.All the time M/Bs detected AMDs new CPUs at least in the name of "Unknown AMD " But today phenom does not boot with 98% of AM2 boards.... this is a new big mistake from AMD pushing AM2 users to Intel core2.

6.Memoy controller in 9500 and other low-clocked phenoms is very poor,perform like a 754 DDR1 CPU,in clocks higher than 2.8 this problem solved,This means performance of phenom goes higher per clock! then a 3.2 GHZ phenom (shanghai) may beat a core2 per clock!who knows!

7.In intel Max of REAL performance of any Ram is this: 400MHZ for fsb800,533mhz for fsb 1066,667 mhz for fsb1333,800 mhz for fsb 1600, and this is a chipset limitation!and will change in next generation.

8.X2 6400+ is a CPU you can buy it at 180$ (boxed with heat-pipe fan)... It is a power hungry choice but it's price make it a good choice.Which is faster than 6750 with the same price.this CPU has a good performance in Memory.(around 10000MB p/s) ,But it's technology is old.Why Amd cannot build a low power cpu at this performance?This could be another mistake!

9.Clock is not a problem.I think power waste is the problem.Phenom is not a good per watt CPU ,if it was.... there is no problem with it's lower clock/performance ratio and While I am waiting for a better low-power and higher clocked phenom.

So AMD or Intel? Nvidia or ATI?  thats the question...

?!?!?!??!?!?!What is your point?

?????!?!?!?WTF?

I have a bad feeling this is going to go in to flames.
 
@OP:

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO A TROLL

What is the purpose of this Thread?

OP, Why Don't you Post under your REAL ID?
 
Are you THAT embarrased about your post???
 
I would be..............

 
a lame attempt to troll.

^Agreed. And remember:
 
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO A TROLL:

Sounds to me you like the high end ATI GPU's but hate the AMD mobo's and phenom.  You also dont want the quads from Intel as you are afraid of new CPU's coming crushing any high priced CPU now.  I would suggest you buy a cheap dual core maybe the E2160, E2180, or X2 5000BE with an HD 3850 or HD 3870.
 
Like the others your post seems trollish or maybe your just very picky.

what is the point of that long and disturbing wall of text?

X48 Board intel and ati.

If you're going to do show a lame picture about a troll, at least make it look like a lame troll picture and take it from WoW

2 cents...
 
this is probably stating the obvious overall... but, i just recently upgraded from an s939 X2 3800+ @ 2.4 1.4v nForce4-a939 2.5GB PC3200 7800GT 256MB... ...to an LGA775 E2200 @ 3.0 1.42v IP35-E 4GB PC6400 8800GT 512MB
 
the reason im saying this though, was because just upgrading the gpu by itself wasnt nearly enough of a difference for gaming, with the 8800GT 512 performing rather similar to the 7800GT 256, in games specifically... and at first it was quite a dissapointment (with framerates oftentimes stuttering in more games than not, still, especially at remotely higher resolutions and details)... but it turns out after some experimenting, that the platform i was still using, had finally outlived its usefulness (for me anyhow, its been handed down though), it took almost 3 years, but, it finally happened...
 
i didnt realize how substantial the impact of a cpu alone could make for gaming, especially when the other cpu wasnt slow really, or so i thought (the 4GB of pc6400 was initially a single 2GB dimm too, so, no difference there for gaming so much)... though, my brother did comment on how slow his [X2 3800+ @ 2.4] was in comparison when it came to map loading, so, another perk from upgrading the above parts
 
anyhow... just thought i would share that though, and express how satisfied i am with the overhaul

I would like to draw your attention to the Search controls at the top of the page.  These questions have been asked thousands of times.  With a little effort on your part, I'm sure you'll manage to find something helpful.
 
This site does a lot of hardware reviews.  If you look hard enough, there's probably something that will tell you what's the best video card for the money (fyi - that was a hint).

 
Come Come now.
Don't expect the challanged to think :>

@massih Do you have any supporting article or anything for your statement & judgement?  
 
IMO that's a nice issue However we'll need more justification for your article.
 
For me all the things happening in the world of computing (gaming in particular) is evil (but I like it ).
 
Nowadays the market was driven by the big company, not by the customer .. Sad, but we have no options ...

antas ,Tomshardware guide has details most of my experiences in more detail.I tested many systems but not as much as toms.if you wana try go to charts
 
but The only thing you cannot find in toms-guide is higher quality of ATI 3870:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/foru [...] ge-quality

and I am 100% sure about 3870 x2 quality is much better.because I have a
shop I can test every hardware I want!
details in 3870 is much detailed!

about low performance of ddr2/ddr3 systems sisoft sandra is a good reference.but be carefull sisoft sandra is not a good reference for CPU! that is not real world.

somebody find a job for :
Shadow7037 93 !!!
this page is made for a fast and quick choose to build a system!
When you do not have time you should trust people to help you. but:

Shadow7037 93 you have full time here I think!
be carefull!