Thanks. I may only do 4GB of RAM. I figured I'd probably go 64 bit on this machine, assuming no one has had issues running games in the 64 bit version of the OS, so I was going to take advantage of the extra RAM mostly because I could.
I'm leaning towards getting a bare bones system with the mobo, case, processor, power supply, and then buying the other parts to put in myself. Unless I can find someone that will let me customize enough to get what I want, I'll likely go that route.
I was reading more about the ATI cards last night. It seems like the 5700 series or I believe the 4800 was comparable to these performance wise or even slightly better. Slightly lower cost as well, but no DirectX11 support. Not sure how long it will be before we start seeing games taking advantage of Directx11.
I'm not planning on overclocking and was looking at the Core i7 860. LGA1156 instead of LGA1366 socket I believe. It looks like I may be pretty much topped out as far as what processor I can use if I go this route, but I also don't plan to upgrade to a different processor during the machines life, so I don't know that this matters. The Core i7 900 series seems to start using the LGA1366 socket.
The memory still seems to be in groups of 2 for the 800 series, then goes to groups of 3 for the 900 series.
Processors Not sure why, as both are DDR3. The little bit of looking I've done seems to indicate a big price jump to go to the 900 series, except for the 920, so that could be an option too. 920 is 2.66Ghz vs. 2.8 for the 860, so a minor difference there. Not sure that the other differences are between the 900 and 800 series besides the socket (and therefore mobo) it uses. I'll have to look more.
