go for the athlon 64 x2. that plus two 6600GTs is DEFINATELY worth 100 bucks. Asus makes a really good nforce4 sli motherboard. i think the model number is A8N-SLI Deluxe. I'd suggest at least 1GB of RAM (two 512MB sticks), but 2GB would be MUCH better, especially when (not if) you have to upgrade to Vista (or switch to Linux ).

 

The SLi board I was looking at was $130 with a $30 rebate, so I was lucking out on it... it seems to be a decent board (I've always used ASUS so it'll be a change for me.) My current PSU is a Thermaltake Power 420W, do you think that'll be enough? I sure hope it is, as of right now I've got $400 to spend on this machine. Then again, I can always buy and save the parts until I can piece the rest of it together, but that would be a pain.

Thanks though for the speedy reply.

 

Yeah that Thermal Take PSU should be good enough I would have thought, TT make decent stable PSUs and it has dual +12v rails so it should power everything fine. At the end of the day if you find it isn't powerful enough you could always chuck something beefier in there though you should be okay.

Regarding the mobo just find a board in your price range, make sure it's the right socket and check out some reviews...

Edit: BTW... the only A8N boards I can see on newegg are 939 socket boards whereas the EVGA is an AM2 socket, so what do you actually need?

 

how hardcore is your gaming? and are you a moneybags?
you could get a quad x64 processor with like 4 gigs of ram and quad sli (if its out yet) or dual sli