Actually AA does make a huge difference with Crysis, just not with ATIs new cards. They do AA on their shaders instead with seperate ROPS (saves memory bandwidth) and the HD4870 has a fuck load of shading power. 1200 giga flops, a 8800GTX has half that.
As for the powersupply, you don't want to go close to the max output, specially if you use your computer often. People don't realise the power supplies in PCs are not designed to operate at their rated output all the time. You'll probably be fine with the components you have now but if you upgrade and say add another HD4870 down the road you'll need to replace the PPU. Not a big deal.
Yes there is an overkill, you should always buy smart, build an optimal system, if you have a small display like mine and start crossfiring a 4870 or even 8800 gtx, I believe this is a very poor purchase, unless of course you throw money out of the window, by the time you really gonna start to use your setup , it’ll be obsolete much like a single 4870… why ? because PC is now very tied to consoles, the console decide and pc get it later, heck even the new engine from Carmack , a pc follower turned to focus more on consoles, he said it himself YOU WILL NOT SEE some dandy graphic features that will not be able to run on consoles. So TODAY and for another one or two years, my pc will run all those 360-ps3 games with at least 60fps with some very few exclusive pc games, but then when the consoles will move to next generation, BAM my pc is suddenly dead. Well it might probably play their first gen titles , like Crysis Predator or some shit like that …
Gone are the days when PC had some serious games that squeezed most of the hardware. There will only be some very few exceptions.
You know I wasn't being condesending when I said you made a smart build. You hit a nice price/balance, I understand this. Still "overkill" implies that you can build a system that will always have untapped power. That's not the case. If I had 10 grand to spend a gaming rig, I still couldn't build anything overkill. It's still going to be obsolete in 2-5 years. It will work but forget about the highest settings for the top games. I agree that PC performance climb will slow down eventually and consoles are catching up but we're still decades from PC hardware maxing out with current trends. Even if we reach a point when software developers can't feasibly use this extra muscle. I just refuse to believe this. Game assets like textures take time and money to produce and it's going to get harder to do future hardware justice but their are easier ways to use the extra power. You can add more enemies, better physics, AI, more scripted events, shorten loading times, faster frames you can have more at the same time without comprimise.
Furthermore, there are infinit game concepts that are not even possible today because of certain limits in technology and many don't need super high res textures or other expensive game assets. Developers just need to think outside the box.
<message edited by Agent Ghost on Aug 07, 2008 22:14>