Questions about a new machine

Intel chipsets are usually preferable to NVidia ones unless you are planning to SLI GTX 260's.

I would suggest a P45 motherboard and an ATi 4870 on the information given.

For RAM, unless you are planning very large overclocks, DDR2 800 will be fine. Go for 4Gb and Vista 64bit.

Jeremy

Thank you for the adivce, I'll go back and look at some Intel boards. I have a graphics card already, I'm just updating a few of the older parts.

What is your purpose for this build and what are the parts that you currently have that your going to use for this build??
Intel and nVidia chipsets haven't been all rosy as jpdykes has stated. Currently the X-fire mobo's have been quite a bit more stable and reliable over some of the nVidia offerings. This is not to say AMD chipsets haven't been all rosy either, but I'd consider a p45 based mobo. The 4870 is a nice GPU, depending on your requirements. the q9950 is quite expensive and I'd usually recommend something cheaper, but since I don't know what your purpose of this build is, I'll hold off on recommending any CPU's.

My goal for the system is simply to make it as powerful as possible. The only parts I plan on purchasing at the moment, are a Motherboard, Processor, and RAM. I have the rest covered. I want the q9950 simple for its power. I also have a graphics card, an nVidia 8600 series I believe, and don't want to upgrade it at the moment.

Okay powerful for what? Your going to be VERY CPU heavy with your proposed setup, not that I'm saying that is wrong, but thats what it is. So what is your proposed reasons for this build? Gaming/DVD burning/CAD????

Gaming is part of it, I also do a decent amount of graphics design, and some 3ds max rendering as well.

Well your not going to do much gaming on a 8600 GPU, but that is up to you. Personally I'd get a bit lesser CPU and just OC it to higher speeds, if you feel your not getting enough CPU power. That is just my opinion though.