Final Gaming Build

Well since you are using a 24" monitor you could take advantage of SLI, but wait for the 48x0 series cards. It is only until the end of the month. Less than 15 days. The 4850 is supposed to handily outperform the 8800GT for around the same money.

Crossfire boards cost less money and scale better than SLI setups. Plus you can use a rocksolid Intel chipset motherboard versus the craptacular nVidia chipset. It is up to you, but I would hold the trigger until July.

Yeah a wait is probably wisest. P.S. I hate you for having a system like that and just playing world of warcraft lol.

Good suggestion. How much is the 4850 anticipated to be? $220 or so?

Also, will one 4850 likely outperform an SLI 8800GT setup?

Ok, I've now officially changed my mind on my build. I've changed it to this in the op.

Now going with this build:

E8400 3GHz 6mb 45nm
Asus P5Q Deluxe
Corsair TX Series TX750W
Mushkin HP2 6400 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800 5-4-4-12 (1.8V) 240pins Memory
Antec P182
SAMSUNG Black SH-S203B DVD Burner
Logitech G15 Keyboard
Logitech G5 Mouse
Razer Exactmat
Dell 2408WFP 24" Monitor

And waiting to see whether I'll get one of the following:

Sapphire ATI RADEON HD 3870 X2 1024MB GDDR3
or
ATI 4850 or 4870
or
8800GTX, or 8800GX2 or maybe even GTX280

Of course it will be non-sli, but I think I'm going to be going ATI anyways.

Main reason I changed is because most of the games that are out right now that I would want to play don't play too badly with a 3870X2 as compared to the higher end Nvidia boards:
World in Conflict, Age of Conan, Mass Effect

So I can go with a 3870x2 at the least.

280 is a waste, it barely outperforms 9800GTX SLI and costs more money. Stay away.

The 260 looks to be a good deal at 400, but I really think the best deal will be 4850s (around $200) each in Crossfire. This will outperform a 8800GT SLI setup and cost about the same around of money. 48x0 X2 cards (two GPUs on one card) will be out in November.

The 260 was able to handle AoC maxed at 1920x1200 just for a reference point.