OK, I love WW1. Trying to upgrade on the cheap..opinions please

[Boozeman]

I'm leaning AM3 cpu/mobo along with a vid card.

What's the current sweet spot in AM3 cpus?  What's the bang for the buck vid card?

I'm going to need cpu, mobo, vid card and 4 (or more?) Gigs of RAM. It'd be nice to bring this in close to $400 + or  - a bit.

Thoughts?

An X3 440 should be the best bang for buck processor on the AM3 socket, but AH prefers higher clocked dual cores. So probably the fastest Athlon/Phenom X2 CPUs will give you more performance in AH for the same or less money.

Best bang for buck card, the 4850 is quite close to that honor.But take a look at the 4770 too, just a tiny bit slower, a bit more expensive, but draws a lot less power. With it, you may be able to keep your current PSU, which helps to keep the costs down.

[Masherbrum]

I'd say the 5670 for around $100 is a great card. 

[Toad]

I looked at Tom's Hardware on that card. Their conclusion was spend $10 more and get a 4850.

It is this cutthroat ~$100 environment where the Radeon HD 5670 will be forced to sink or swim at $99. Here it will have to compete against the similarly-performing $80 GeForce 9600 GT, the slightly-faster $95 GeForce 9800 GT, the clearly-superior $110 Radeon HD 4770, and the vastly more attractive $110 Radeon HD 4850 / GeForce GTS 250. Purely from a performance standpoint, it would be madness to buy the Radeon HD 5670 instead of spending a couple dollars more for the Radeon HD 4850 or GeForce GTS 250. DirectX 11 isn't much of an issue here. From what we've seen so far in our DiRT 2 results, the performance hit is too large to bear for the new Radeon HD 5670. Granted this is only one DirectX 11 title, but it certainly sets the stage.

[Krusty]

Agreed. The same pattern follows with the 4650/4870. I just got one of those (4650) for another PC, and tried to run a few games on it as a test. Really choked. The 4870 may be a lovely and very powerful card, but it's 4600 brother is a stripped down budget card that chokes on medium resolutions and medium settings.

Unless you're running The Sims (and nothing else) skip the 5670 line and go straight for the 58's instead.

[Masherbrum]

I never said the 5670 WASN'T a "budget card".   It IS one at $99.   It scores better than the GTS 240.