Another wait or buy question

IIRC The 9800 will be able to use the current PCI-E, I'm sure someone more knowledgable than I can give you a definite answer on that matter.

E6850 or Q6600 if you're not going to OC, E6750 will save you some money and OC's quite well.

*poke* Yes you could get the new AAKS WD HDs and save yourself some $$$, but if $$$ is not an issue then I would get some solid state drives  

1) You should definitely OC, at least some. No point not do atleaset moderate OCs.

2) Good Point on the HDDs.

3) It will fit in your Slot, but will be limited to PCIE 1.1 bandwidth limitations. I doubt this will limit your card in the least since the current cards do not come close to hitting the wall.

I have been thinking about this too. Personally, when to build relies heavily on what you want and how long you want it to last. Personally, I plan to build a computer that will last at least 4 years with a few upgrades here and there. If you can wait/want to save money I would recomend waiting until November when companies have their Black Friday sales (right after thanksgiving).

As for the technologies. The new intel x38 chipset is supposed to have PCIe 2.0 and DDR 3 on it. The PCIe 2.0 does double the memory bandwidth, but it also increases the watts that can go through the mobo to the graphics card. The x38 chipset shoudl be out by late september early october. Waiting until November means the price will drop some. Also the G92 nvidia refresh is around the corner, some say october, others say november. When they come out the prices of the current 8800's will drop, as well as they may have PCIe 2.0 cards.

Personally I am going for the long term saver, I will get a cheap dual core proc on black friday, as well as a used graphics card, or a cheap ($50-$100) but effective one (on par with geforce 7900 gs). Then a year or two later after the 45nm procs have been released, and drop in price I will upgrade my proc, also I will get the 9800 gtx graphics card after it has been out for a while to have the prices mellow out.

I will do my build this way b/c most the games out now will run on my initial build, and Crysis will run on lower settings, then a year later the computer will run all gamesout plus the next years games with ease.

One last thing to consider is that the LGA 775 socket will end soon from intel, in a year or two they will switch it out I believe. Personally I like to build a computer when the current technology has been fully developed and bugs worked out. Basically equivolent of building a pentium 4 with 800 fsb just before the EE came out which the pentium Ds shortly follwed. My P4 handled everything I needed it to back then, and it still is kicking today.

Also, about the HD's, I would go for one raptor for a primary HD with Vista on it as well as any temp files, and then go with 2 x 500 GB WD's in a raid for data storage and games.