Building a Gaming PC - Need Advise

Hey Everyone

Im new on this Website and Forum, but i heard some very good comment about it so im trying lol

So Has my Title Explain, im gonna build myself a new PC for Gaming only (well, 98% gaming and 2% of Watching video and making little CSS movie for Fun lol)

I'll first go with an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Socket LGA775, 3 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB, 6MB L2 Cache, 45nm for the CPU and an Asus® Extreme EN8800GTX/HTDP/768M - GeForce™ 8800GTX w/768Mb DDR3 & PCI Express x16 for the GPU. Also i'll get a Western Digital Raptor (WD1500ADFD) 150GB SATA 10,000 RPM 16MB Buffer (OEM) . The thing is when i come up to the Motherboard and Ram , i get pretty confused.

Asus P5N-D 2-Way SLI nVidia nForce 750i SLI Chipset Dual-Channel DDR2 667/800Mhz 2x PCI-Express 2.0 HD Audio SATA/eSATA GigaLAN Support Core 2 Quad Processor & 1333Mhz System Bus

EVGA NF68-A1 SLI Socket 775 nVidia nForce 680i Chipset Dual-Channel DDR2 533/667/800 Support 1066/1333 FSB 8-Channel High Definition Audio 3x PCI-Express Graphic Slots Heatpipe Design

I was looking maybe for one of those 2 but were they first to pop-up in my face and i dint push the research much further. As you Can see, they are SLIable ( lol ) because im not sure if i wont go buy another 8800GTX later this year to get a bit more power ( the more is always the best i used to say but What do you think of it ??) And For The Ram (3 Gigs minimum), i was looking at some Kingston or maybe Patriot ( Mhz depending on what Motherboard Ill get but at least 800 probably 1066, DDR2 or DDR3 ???) but i was also looking at Crosair since its always the brand i see when website are making game test to make like FPS comparasion and things like that, ....

So That It lol , maybe a bit long but i wanted to be pretty clear in my post so you guys could help me the best way !

Just to complete the Post, I'm Building the PC to play Most of the time to CSS(i know i dont need a powerful machine to run this game lol) but also for all the new next-gen Game like Cod4, Stalker, BioShock, .... , and the HARDCORE CRYSIS and i dont wanna play them a Low Level

So THX GUYS
Lakai

Ditch the 680i unless you don't plan to upgrade to Yorkfields. 7x0i does 45nm quads.

SLI isn't supported by every game. However, dual core gpus are. Just like dual core cpus. The os will take advantage of the cores. Either make sure your games support SLI or you can get a 9800GX2 for example which is plenty for gaming.

What's your budget?

Dual core isnt even supported by most games, its just that one core handles the game while the other one handles the background tasks. There are no operating systems right now that use multithreading also, there all still single threaded. 9800 gx2 is a crap card for the money, you will be better served by a 8800 GTS which is only a couple of frames behind a Ultra, for less then half the cost. Or even 2 8800 gt's, or 2 9600 gt's. Sli isnt supported by every game, but if you run a high resolution, like 1600x1200 or above, you will benefit from 2 cards.

Good points above ^ ^ ^ ^ Since you'll probably have this system for 2 years or more spending a couple of weeks doing research is a good thing. You got started in a good place here at Toms, lots of info, lots of links for tests, benchmarks, reviews, rumors and good stuff. After a couple weeks of research the next generation of graphics cards should be out (at least some reliable benchmarks) that will help to finalize your plans.
X38 or X48 motherboard is a good place to start checking out.
Good link for info http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/ another place for info http://www.guru3d.com/ good luck and have fun

Raid is useless these days unless your moving large amounts of data, for gaming, casual computer use, sata 2.0 will perform just as good as raid 0

Even with gaming, there is going to be no diffrence with raid or sata 2.0. Go check out the tests they have run, needs to be large files anymore to see the diffrence. Games dont move that much data all the time, game loads, data is loaded on the ram, and there it sits, since its much faster then constantly accessing the harddrive.

RAID will load game levels faster, but in actual game play there is little difference. Maybe 1-2FPS.