hello all. I'm looking for some opinions. i'm trying to talk my wife into letting me order some new parts (read: a new pc). right now I'm on an Athlon 64 FX-57 (4000+), Asus A8N-SLI Premium, 2 GB of PC 3200 Ram, 2 EVGA 7900GT's.

 I'm thinking about an Intel Core 2 Duo E6850, Asus Striker Extreme, 4 Gb DDR2 800, and an EVGA 8800Ultra (756mb).

 What do you guys think? Pretty good upgrade? See anything that needs to be changed? i haven't built a new system since dual cores have been out so i'm not so sure what to pick right now and i want to get the best for my money.

 edit- also, i have a 600w OCZ GameXtreme PSU...with that be enough for my new rig?

I'm very happy with my ultra and your other choices look rock solid. Trust your instincts & get your rig, even if nvidia drops another card soon the current cards have plenty of power IMO.

BTW: My 520w PSU shows absolutely no signs of being underpowered for my system. Based on an 80%+ efficiency rating I estimate having about another 60-80w to "play" with and still keep peace of mind. A physX card could easily be thrown in as it draws between 20-30w.

I have to convince my wife I need it first! 🙂 We are going to discuss it tonight.

With the stuff that I have listed up there...do you guys think I'd be able to play Crysis full out balls to the wall at 1680x1050? What about Medal of Honor and BioShock? I think the big bottleneck in my current rig is the processor. What about you?

MOH:Airborn demo maxed @ 1680 x 1050 plays as close to perfect on my rig as I have ever seen any game run... honestly.

As for Bioshock I can't say it's perfect(and believe you me I'm extremely picky and perceptive to every flaw, glitch, stutter, etc.), but I'd say it performs better than GOW did on my X360 @ 1080i(used to have 360)if that tells you anything.

I believe Crysis won't be a problem for me maxed @ 1680, but I'll probably be playing it DX9 on XP(no vista 4 me till SP1 at least).

BTW:Just a day prior to getting my ultra, I ran the bioshock demo(maxed of course) on my 640mb gts and the performance appeared identical(if not a super tiny bit smoother strangely)so I imagine it will also handle MOH and Crysis(I OC'ed it to 600/900 from 512/792 and it scores over 10k in 3dm06 under xp).

i plan to play the MOH demo tonight on my current rig and see how it handles it. I know i got a pretty good bit of stutter while playing command and conquer 3.

I just don't know if I should invest in dual core or quad core at the moment.

I used fraps(free version)and my fps in MOH is about 100 I'd say, often above.

Also the final boss battle in bioshock never dipped below 44 fps and was on average about 65(estimating since I used the freeware ver.)peaking over 100 at times(very smooth).

IMO a quad core isn't an essential(yet) even for the hardcore gamer going into 08, if anything you'll have more heat to deal with.

nice, going all out i see. 

yup...i did. I bought the 6850, 4GB DDR2 800 Patriot Ram, EVGA nVidia 680i mobo, and the EVGA 8800Ultra last night. Keep your eyes open on the rig section...this ones gonna be huge!!!

I bought the Thermalright 8800 vga cooler also...that bad boy is MASSIVE!!!

nice cant wait to see some pics! 

Sounds awesome, looking forward to the thread.

You're stoked... ahh the fun of buildin, tweakin and benchin a new rig!!!