I'm upgrading my computer. I already have a case, hard drives and a power supply. I will be running XP, this will mostly be used for gaming. Playing TF2, hopefully crysis, cod4, starcraft 2. I don't necessarily need high settings on all of these, i have a CRT monitor anyways

this is my psu : a OCZ GameXStream 700W ATX12V 24PIN SLI Ready Active PFC ATX Power Supply 120MM Fan Black
http://www.ncix.com/products/index [...] Technology

I was thinking of getting this mobo:
ASUS P5Q Pro ATX LGA775 P45 DDR2 2PCI-E16 Crossfire 3PCI-E1 2PCI SATA2 Sound GBLAN eSATA Motherboard

http://www.ncix.com/products/index [...] cture=ASUS

this cpu:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Dual Core Processor LGA775 3.0GHZ Wolfdale 1333FSB 6MB Retail

http://www.ncix.com/products/index [...] ture=Intel

this video card
XFX GeForce 8800GT COD4 512MB 600MHZ 1.8GHZ GDDR3 PCI-E Dual DVI-I HDCP DIRECTX10 Video Card

http://www.ncix.com/products/index [...] acture=XFX

and ram....would this work? i know very little about ram. and i know that XP wont recognize 4GB of ram but should i go for 4GB or just go with 2GB?
this is the ram
Corsair XMS2 TWIN2X2048-6400C4 2GB 2X1GB PC2-6400 DDR2-800 CL 4-4-4-12 240PIN Dual Channel Memory

http://www.ncix.com/products/index [...] re=CORSAIR


if anyone has any suggestions at all please feel free to post. I'm pretty amateur here I built my last system but my mobo just went and I want to overhaul the rest. I used to have:

p4c800-e deluxe mobo, 3.2ghz p4 cpu, 1gb ocz dual channel ram, 5900 ultra card.

Thanks!

A 32 bit system can only use effectively a 2GB RAM. 32 bit Xp can read 'till 3.2-3.3GB but it can't use it effectively.
Only 64 bit system get the full advantage from more than 2 GB system(my 64 bit VISTA). btw your choice of memory is good.

IF you wanna play crysis with maximum setting than go for 2 GPUs.
Why 8800GT? your (P5Q) mobo is a crossfire mobo.
Get ATI if you wanna stick with your mobo. Let say 2x HD4850? or change your mobo to n-Vidias chipsets for SLI, only than you can use 2 8800GTs or any SLI GPUs.

PSU? I can't see any PSU? Suggestion : Corsair 450W for 1 GPU and 750W for 2 GPU.

Add &promoid=1060 at the end of your NCIX links, you will save $1 on the CPU and I haven't checked the others.

It would be polite to write the names of the parts, not just links - some of us are too lazy to click the links.

E8400 - OK

P5Q - OK, for a single HD 4850. Bad choice for two. For two, you want X38 or X48, not P45.

+1 for HD 4850

I got 2x2GB of RAM for my XP 32-bit. So I only see 3.25 GB, it's still better than 2 and prices are very low.
Yes, a game will only use 2GB max, but at least it does get all the 2GB because there's another 1.25 for other applications and Windows.

So I'm obviously way out of my league here. I'm a complete noob at this kind of thing. I mean I can put them together but I need a lot of help with choosing the parts. I don't know why I chose the P5Q I just read a lot of other threads with people having good things to say about the mobo.

As for the vid card. Well $ is a bit of an issue. I unexpectedly had my old mobo just go on my old system and $ is kind of tight for me. so of course I could get two vid cards but that would raise the price a lot and I don't have experience to set that up properly. I figured that one card would get the job done to run the games I listed in the first message and it would also leave it open to upgrade later.

So is this setup ready for the future? I know nothing really is but you know what I mean.

Btw I fixed the parts in the first post to include the description.

Thanks!

No worries, lots of people on this forum who are glad to help.

Tell you what, let's forget SLI/Crossfire here. You can just replace the video card later if you find yourself rich and owner of a huge monitor. For a single video card, the P5Q is a very good choice. The PSU is overkill, but there's nothing wrong with that and you already have it anyway.

The HD 4850 is better than the 8800GT, but $150 for an 8800GT plus CoD 4 is a great price. Since you won't buy two cards, it's OK to have an nVidia card on a Crossfire MB. OK, go for the 8800GT.

BTW, check out the GA-EP35-DS3L. With that promoid it's $93. If it has all the features you want you might as well get it and save $54+tax.
http://www.ncix.com/products/index [...] omoid=1060