[citation][nom]Giovanni86[/nom]ATI has nothing on NVIDIA, although ppl claim it to be better and cheaper then NVIDIA's line up i beg the differ.[/citation]
Have you had a bad experience with ATI recently? You can't be basing this opinion off of reviews as they tend to show that ATI has been at least somewhat competitive in price/performance since the 3800 series showed up. In the workstation market, ATI's offerings are very compelling (especially at the price points they released them at). Now with the 4800 series out, ATI's price/performance ratio can hardly be disputed. As far as drivers go, ATI has addressed any issues I've had in a much more timely manner than nVidia. Power consumption differences between ATI and nVidia's new series are insignificant as over the life of the card you will not save near enough to offset the initial price difference between two. Heat is a concern for me, but as long as the card can handle it, it isn't really an issue. Still if its a concern, with the savings you get from an HD4870 has compared to the GTX260, you could put on a aftermarket heatsink that would outperform any stock heatsink and still have money to burn. You could even buy a cheap water cooling system and dedicate it to the GPU if you wanted. So I dispute your claim and say that ATI more clearly now than any time since the acquisition has SOMETHING on nVidia. In fact, I would say that nVidia only really has two things on ATI. They have the undisputed highest performing chip out right now (GTX280) and they have better linux driver binaries. (Though, I haven't tried the community developed ATI drivers)
All that said, I'm not rushing to the store to replace my 8800GTS (G92) with two HD4850s or HD4870s. There isn't much of a practical gain to doing so as my cards give the maximum game experience I can get on my 22" 1680x1050 monitors. When I'm ready to upgrade, I'll consider which offerings are the best at that point. I have no reservation, however, recommending ATI's cards for anyone I deem it appropriate at the moment.
[citation][nom]Giovanni86[/nom]And 3rdly i can't believe that a sli system as well could run off a 400watt PSU.[/citation]
Two 8800GTS (G92) cards will run off of a quality 430 watt PSU just fine. Though, my overclocking attempts weren't exactly rewarding until I dropped in a PSU with a little more juice. Keep in mind, the system build in the article only has one hdd and one optical drive. As thin as their build is, they may even have enough headroom even for GPU overclocking (I have no experience with Silverstone PSUs). If you're having trouble, you may want to consider a different brand PSU. I've had good luck with PC Power & Cooling, Enermax, and Fortron Source. Oh, and the lower end Antech PSU's may as well be from a different company as their quality isn't even comparable to their higher end offerings.
I do have to mention that I seen a lot of people who look at the average power posted by review sites and think that they can get away with a power supply that just barely exceeds those figures. It isn't the average power that kills you, it's the instantaneous power. More specifically, if you ever draw enough current on any rail that the voltage drops below what your components can handle, then you'll have issues. This usually happens on the 12v rail, but can happen elsewhere depending on your setup. A large single 12v rail PSU is more likely to run a system loaded to near the PSU's capacity without issue than a multi-12v rail system. Multi-12v rail systems are nice because as long as each rail can support its respective load, the rails are cleaner and better for overclocking. Combined load is often a fallacy as you can't share current between independent rails. Better designed multi-12v rail PSUs like some of Enermax's PSUs aren't fully independent and thus can supply larger currents on individual rails when necessary. Noise is still filtered between rails (better overclocking), but you don't leave as much untapped current there. Unfortunately, throwing in large numbers of rails, and consequently leaving a lot of current delivering capability untapped, is largely the reason people think they need 1K+ watt PSUs. GPU manufacturers can't assume that you have a well designed PSU and thus have to recommend huge PSUs to make sure they don't have angry customers.
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