GTX 460 is the only fermi worth getting. 10% more power consumption than a 5850. runs somewhat warm for 5000 standards (it's a cool breeze compared to 4000 standards). There's another problem inherent in both the GTX 400 series and the Radeon 5000 series. The GTX 400 series has significantly better game performance per flop than the radeon 5000 series (but it has a severely limited double precision calculation due to nvidia wanting you to buy workstation graphics. Don't worry, gaming has nothing to do with double precision). The Radeon 5000 series completely decimated the GTX 400 series in flops, but still manages to barely keep up with the fermis in terms of performance. To display this, let's compare the GTX 480 and the 5870:
:Transistor count:
480 - 3billion
5870 - 2 billion
:GFlops:
480 - 1350
5870 - 2720
:Average gaming performance in fps as a percentage:
480 - 100%
5870 - 90%
:Power consumption: (it should be noted that where I live, electricity is cheap, computers idle most of the time, and the power you use for your computer is nothing compared to oven, dryer, washing machine, microwave, or tv)
480 - 320 W (this is quite a lot for a graphics card. When stress testing, this can hit 320 W. If you were to tri sli these, you'd be looking at over 1000W.)
5870 - 220 W
we can see that the GTX 480 is a better card, costs more, but strangely the 5870 is better in every aspect except for gaming (more powerful, less transistors=less heat and power). There's also other things that fermi does much better, like tesselation, and any dx11 in general. It's somewhat strange that on paper the 5870 should be a better card but doesn't come out that way. I don't really understand the mechanics behind it all though, just the end result.
You are crazy if you buy from newegg.ca. Prices are
way too high on most items. That case is $80 on newegg, and $62 on ncix.
The problem with antec cases:
They are decent cases, but cost 50-100% more than what they are worth. They lack many features which are commonplace on much cheaper cases, like no plastic, removable motherboard tray, (re)movable HDD rack, cable management guides. If you can buy an antec case at 50% off (antec 300 at $30 USD) then I will recommend it. At $30, it beats out every other case you can possibly buy with flying colors. At $80, it's a fucking joke.
If you look around the forum for all the help threads, you'll see a lot of good advice from me and many others.
Start
here. Ask questions after you have a build ready (ie, is this good, is there anything better I can get for the same price?) That way we know how much money you want to spend, what the general performance you're looking for, etc...
If you have specific questions, I can try to explain why I think X is better than Y, or why X is a good deal, or what sort of performance X is. The problem is I'm biased, especially when it comes to cases and power supplies (though I'm getting better with the power supply). If there is no clear performance advantage for an item (ram, motherboard, case), it's very difficult to recommend something based on looks and functionality, since you have to say X is good because it looks like it would do Z well. That's really where you need to step up and say "I want this, it looks good". I know you already did this with the antec 300, but I can't stress enough that you are wrong, and anyone who builds computers frequently knows that antec cases are shit.
"Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman - do we have to call the Gentleman a gentleman if he's not one?"