Just a few questions I need help to.

Interesting post. There are a few things that I'm concerned about:
* What is your budget?
* What are you being charged to put your computer together?
* Are you being charged to install the OS?
* Do you have any more specifics on your build? Like the mobo, Case, PSU, etc.
* What is the purpose of this build? Gaming? Photo Editing? Browsing the web??
* Oh and what are they (the local shop) charging for the GPU (3870 or the 9600gs)??

P.S. I'm betting that we could get you a list of the parts you would need, for your given budget and probably beat the local shop price. Now you could still have them do all of the work putting it together, if you still want them to, but more than likely the build quality would be better than the local shop!

My budget is £500.
No, they are doing it for free, I know someone who works there.
Yes, Vista was with what came with the parts I ordered.
I've got all the parts, just the graphics card which im not sure which is better. Its just the main thing I need to know. Is it easy to downgrade to XP then? I aint installed an OS in a while, so I dont wanna do it if im not 100% sure on how to.
The purpose of the system is for gaming.
They are charging aroound £60-£70 for the 9600GS and around £50-70 for the 3870, I just want to know which one is best for gaming.

Cut down on the processor and get a HD4850, best budget card ever made.

Or sorry lol, I didnt read your post enough, get an HD4850 (100 GBP) or HD4870 1GB even, if you want to pay a bit more (180-200 GBP).

Also, why the hell can I not edit my posts, it is seriously frustrating me like hell, I have to chain post to post new information.
If your shop does not have those 2 cards go for the 3870, their performance is the same, but I prefer ati over nvidia.

Some games are developed to run better on Nvidia cards (e.g Crisis), this is because Nvidia gave them a shed full of cash but generally ati is better, i also prefer them.

I agree with Priv tho, you should go for the HD4870, don't see why you would settle for a mid range card when you can have a better one for just a little more.

Dont think it would be a problem to downgrade to XP, not sure why you would though. What is it you don't like about Vista? Is it compatibility. Its a newer, more efficient OS and its been around for a while now so little to no compatibility issues left. You should be thinking about 64 bit too if your gonna go with more than 2GB of RAM

+1 for just jumping into 64-bit Vista. If the reason you're avoiding it because you "heard" is sucks, I can tell you I've been using Vista for over a year and a half and it's been very stable and I haven't had any compatibility issues at all. I would never consider going back to XP. Most of the people still bashing Vista haven't even used it. They just heard from their brothers uncles daughters dog that it sucks. Google the Mojave experiment if you don't believe me.

Thanks for the replies guys. I've read a few things on vista now and it seems to be decent enough to run, I guess I didnt see they had released an SP for it. Replies have been very helpful. Last thing now, I swear . My friend is buying a whole PC since he doesn't want to go custom building, his budget is £700 and he has recognised two systems that he likes, and these are the 2:
Dell XPS 420/2965: http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/store/cur_page.jsp?BV_S...
Packard Bell iXtreme 9600: http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_...

Which ones better?

Well other than building it yourself, I'd pick the Dell myself. Don't know the record of Packard Bell over there, but here in the U.S. it was horrible, so I'm not a big fan of theirs.

Just realised that what i said about vista was silly. If you want to use your computer for games then surely you want as little as possible going on in the background that would be taking up memory. Vista uses more memory than xp so xp would be the best bet in this case. however, its not as simple as that. You cant run dx10 games on xp, granted there is an extremely small amount of games out at the moment that run on dx10 (i think crysis) is the only one, however if you go on this it could be said that vista is future prof whih xp isn't.....eventually all games will run on dx10 so if you go xp, you will eventually have to upgrade.

I like the dell too. I saw a 4GB packard bell on a tv advert recently. think it was from currys or something. It was less than £700. Nearly fell over seeing as tho my home build cost me around £1500 about 1 and half years ago

Thanks again. He's a bit of a noob when it comes to PC's, hes asking how to degrade it?