nvidia cards!

You could try and get 2 GTX 260s and SLI those. Granted I doubt you can get them for under $500 right now, but I think soon you will be able to or perhaps if you find nice rebates you can do it now.

The GTX280 is generally the best card of the three. It should run most games very well. If you should ever need more(which I doubt) , I think it would be the easiest to SLI.

^ I'll second the sli, but the 4870 in CrossX scales better and outperforms the 280 GTX in alot of games surprisingly (or comes close).

The 9800 GX2 is a good option, but it can be a hassle when the game isn't full on par with sli requirements (GRID wasn't when it was released).

They are sold really cheap now though, here they are around 399.99- 450. And on Newegg I saw a couple for 350$

2 9800 GTXs will slightly outperform 1 GX2, (some games the GX2 has the upper hand since it tends to scale better in single slot.

The only hassle you'll have is with Quad SLI, I've only seen the GX2 shine on COD4 to make a fuss over it. It beat 3 280 GTX in tri-sli and in Reg-sli.

Other than that the GX2 seems to have problems with most users, my friend says its just rumours for most games, but it holds its own...but I'm sure you don't want to risk it.

My ultimate Suggestion would be wait for the 4870 X2. 1 of those cards will be stronger than buying a 280 GTX or buying 2 260 GTXs, and also cheaper for now.

If you don't have a CrossX board, I still think it would be a good solution since, well its already sli (rumored to work as a single GPU).

Thats my 2 cents

P.S

I think if you really wanna go cheap, I'd look into the 8800 GTS G92s as well (alot better than 2 9800 GTXs for P/Performance

^ what a waste of money (atleast for now) 2 8800 GT hold their own in current gen gaming...

If you don't have something useful to say, don't say it at all.

No Supporting Information at all. Ever think about the general 10% difference in performance between the 4870 and the 280 GTX?

Woah woah woah woah. RAM does NOT get used like that. Also, I think you're confusing RAM with VRAM.

RAM (as in, DDR2/DDR3 RAM) comes in the sticks you put into those long slots probably near the CPU.

VRAM is what's put on the PCB of the graphics card. This is dedicated to the graphics card, meaning it WILL NOT take the RAM on your Mobo and use it like that. Maybe if the RAM on the PCB gets full or if the card needs more memory it will, but that would be seen as another process using resources or something, you wouldn't just lose the RAM.

Now, if you really do have 4 GB of the stuff, then what's gonna happen is that your 32-bit OS should only recognize roughly 3.5 GB. I think that's the limit for a 32-bit OS. Your motherboard, BIOS, graphics card, etc. DO NOT automatically take up a gig of RAM here and there and then your OS can't see it. That's just not true. Probably what's going on is that one of your RAM sticks could be dead (if you have 2 sticks 2 GB each) and while your BIOS knows you have 4 GB installed, there's only 2 GB that are actually usable because the other 2 GB are faulty. Try booting up using only 1 stick of RAM, then switch it for the other. If you don't boot with one of them, then it's a bad stick and that would explain why you only have 2 GB of RAM showing in your OS. Otherwise... I dunno.

anyone?

finally someone with an answer im sry but im a noob when it comes to computers lol how do i shrink my pagefile size step by step instructions would be much appreciated.

i tried nothing happend. =[

no 32bit uses 4gig max but i dont no y its limiting to me 2. the mobo i have is pretty new its the msi p6n diamond. well watever so if i get the 2 gtx 260 and my pc only has 1.3gig of ram to use will it suffer in performance then?
sry for asking so many questions.

It is true that the total memory allocation (video memory included) can only be up to 4 gigs in a 32 bit OS. That still sounds a bit low though - most systems that I've seen report somewhere between 2.6 and 3.3 gigs (with 4 gigs physically installed). What OS do you have? Vista with SP1 should show 4 gigs fully, despite those limitations.

I still say that, no matter what, your video card(s) WILL NOT use up your RAM. They have their own dedicated RAM, there's no need to worry about that.