i2IDIUM

Wow thanks for all the input on the 480 and Radeon cards. I will definitely take a look at that 7850, what brands of AMD cards do you guys recommend? I usually just look at EVGA for nVidia cards. Also, I have not heard great thing about AMD's drivers, esp the recent reports about them tweaking the drivers to output higher fps (presumably to sell more since that is what everyone bases the performance/value of a card on) at the detriment of image quality.

Trying to decide between a GTX 480, 560, and 6870. Each of these are $220 at newegg. The 480 has tremendous performance, but I am hearing that the 4xx series was considered a dud in terms of noise and performance (in comparison to Radeons). I would love to get a 580 or 680 but that costs way too much. Even with the $220 is a bit beyond what I would like to spend. What do you guys recommend?

@metalcraze: Once I get a aftermarket cooler I will :) My Asus board has an autotune feature where it automatically overclocks. In regards to video cards on the market, do you guys think the 560 Ti will drop in price when the 660s release? If so, how much?

I started playing online shooters when I saw my brother playing COD4, since then I have been hooked. However, recently things have grown stale. COD is now so popular all you ever run into is new players and its rarely a challenge. I started playing competitively in MW2 in underground competitive websites as well as gamebattles. While I still enjoy the former, GB is just full of whiny children who try to get a win no matter what. BF3 is... not what I hoped it would be. Recently bought a i5 2500k/SSD/8GB RAM (still working on a video card) rig about 2 months ago. Somehow the other day I stumbled across an ArmA video on youtube (while watching a BF3 video)... and was BLOWN away. I am posting this thread not just to tell you about how excited I am about this game, but I need some help. I have acquired a broken 9600 GT from a friend; just need a capacitor to be replaced. Will this run it? I imagine it will be a bit of a bottleneck. I do want to get something decent that can run ArmA 2 great and will run 3 good as well. ~$140. Any suggestions. Thanks :)