New to building

Don't use SLI with that board. It's a P43 meaning when in sli the second card is at a x1 instead of x16 like it should be. I would get 4gbs of 800 ram instead of 2 of 1066 (that's ddr2 btw, which it should be in either case). A single 4870 or a 9800 gx2 will provide better performance for a bit less money and you won't need an sli board. I recommend the ati 4870 graphics card. Also what's your budget, do you have case, powersupply, monitor, thermal paste, hard drive, optical drive.

My limit is $500. The plan is to keep my atx case and my 500 watt power suppily. I got an older crt that was used for photo shop that is a 19' 1600x1200 so I think im going to keep that for $$ reasons. I wanted to get an sli board to upgrade later by buying a 300 watt "cd rom slot" power suppily add on and an additional 8800 gt, but not for either 6 months, till it becomes too out dated to play games on or untill they stop selling the 8800 gt's all together. Any ideas on a MB around 100-150 that would be 16x 2.0 pci x2? Also thinking about going with a 4850 insted but thats $50 more sadly and not in the budget. (thanks all for your imput BTW! your doing me a huge favor with you info!!)

2x8800GT is the best budget cards that will rape the fastest single gpu card on the market: the GTX280 for a much cheaper price... 4850's are way more expensive than 8800GT's.

It's a good choice, if you can afford it.

I went looking for a low cost SLI board I could recommend for you instead, but I came back with nothing. I think your plan is solid. That combo deal with the CPU and P5Q is good.