As you say Slimshiesty, anything we buy will be out of date, or rather not state of the art as I prefer to think of it, in around 6/12 months. So my advice still stands that if your gonna upgrade buy a graphics card first. Throw it into your old system and if not blown away by the perfomance increase (in games) continue to upgrade the rest. You have nothing to loose really

Pay less now.. and have money to build a new one later when prices on ddr3 stuff comes down.
and then save money there too.
Just cause you have the money doesnt mean it cant be wisely spent.

No offence taken, "speed is a matter of money, how fast can you afford" Seems to sum most things in life up
PS Gainward have been making cards for years and their "Golden Samples" are some of the best money can buy

Corsair mem running at 1333 speeds stock 9,9,9,27 timings.. 4 gigs = 514$ u.s.
Mushkin mem running oc'd from 800 to 1066,  4,5,4,11 timings.. 4 gigs = 96$ u.s.
decent gain @ 1333, but twice the latency and 418$ more expensive.
my setup of mushkin is 1066@ 2.1v timings 5,5,5,15  super stable.

Part 2

Gainward Bliss 8800gts512  259$ u.s.  good card, not so good manufacturer. good price.
EVGA 8800gt512  190$ u.s.  same card as the GTS and same mem.  can be oc'd to and past the GTS with 1 mouse click.  EVGA best in business warranty and 1st of its kind step-up program.

Conclusion

For all the increases you get with the Athlon version, You can get the Slimshiesty version, save 487$ u.s.
Still use your old power supply (in theory).
and only spend 284$ u.s.
with the savings from those 2 items.. you can get..
EVGA 750i FTW mobo  190$
Intel E6850 3.0  260$
and still have some money 37$ left over.

Please dont take offense to this post Athlon, you have a great system, anyone in there right mind would want.
Mine is slightly different but is still on par with yours.
Just showing price per performance.. anyways in 10 months both our systems will be obsolete.

He's going to need a new PSU. 400W will defiantly not work for a GTS.

If he's to stupid to understand that, then so be it...

If your power supply is not more than 3-4 years old, is a good quality brand (antec,PCPaC)
is 450watts and has an 18v rail.. you will be ok to use that.
Definately research what you want, price per performance is the question.

I was forced to buy a new video card yesterday (old 7950GTX finally crapped out, POS) and I picked up the eVGA e-GeForce 8800GT superclocked 512mb for a good price. I'm sure you could find it for less than I paid. Anyway, GREAT card. Runs crysis all very high(xp tweak) at a very very consistent framerate, looks beautiful.

So would you say coupling a new card to an older system gave you noticable performance boost in games?
Ty Buy the best 1333 core 2 duo you can afford matched with a 1333 fsb motherboard and 2 gig DDR 3 memory and a 8800/9600GT card. You do the shopping, after your last post i hope your power supply blows it all up!

...I ended up buying this 9600GT, which was a little more expensive but had a unique cooling system and came with a free game.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6814127333

What are the pros and cons of each?  I'm really not sure which is better.