building new machine -- video card choice

[WildMare]

<p>Things have changed over the past 3 years since my last system I built. My main concern is to choose the right/good video card to play EQ2 :</p><p> Is the geforce 8800GTX a good choice? better than the 8800GTS? I would appreciate all good advice about choosing a decent video card.</p><p>I also am wondering what is a stable CPU and motherboard choice. looking for something stable that will last.</p><p>Thanks for all input in advance.</p>

[Tebos]

<p>Yes...the GTX model is better then the GTS in terms of performance. Current CPU's and motherboards are reliable. You can visit websites such as motherboards.org for more informed decisions. Power supply is one of your most important choices to make. Again, look at review sites.</p><p>Also look at my Sig!</p>

[ratdeath]

Today I would go for a 8800GTS 640mb version, it will run most DX9 games very well and seems to take a lead in games like Oblivion. I would try to build something like this: <b>Motherboard:</b> ASUS P5K P35 DDR2 GBLAN S-775 ATX <b>CPU:</b> INTEL CORE 2 DUO E6850 3.0GHZ 4MB 1333MHZ S-775 (or a E6750) <b>RAM:</b> CORSAIR 4GB DDR2 PC8500 1066MHZ (4X1GB) <b>GPU:</b> ASUS GEFORCE 8800GTS 640MB HDTV DVI-I HDCP PCI-E <b>OS:</b> Windows Vista Ultimate/HomePremium 64bit That would be the core of my system. Intel is the cpu of choice for the moment at least, the new 1333mhz cpu's has very good performance value I think. When it comes to mainboard I would probably go for intel chipset unless I really want SLI support, then it might be a better choice to look at nvidias chipsets. Windows Vista 64bit together with 4GB of ram should be future proof for a few years. Vista 64bit might be a bumpy ride to start with but I guess thats where we are going in the next year or so. Graphics, I would buy a 8800GTS as a very good DX9 card, to early to say how well it do with DX10 and by the time we see any numbers of DX10 titles we will proably be looking at the second or third generation of DX10 cards. This is the component that might be worth to upgrade sooner then the rest <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I am running a A8N-SLI, X2/4400+ with 2gb ram and 8800gts... gonna try and hold on to it as long as I can before upgrade.. but the new intels do look sexy.. arrr.. must resist <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />