System upgrade help

[DEHawk]

Hey there,
Well I am thinking of taking the big ole swan dive off the cliff and upgrade to Vista, but what Vista should I get, I listen to music, like gaming, use Microsoft office, do some photo editing, and eventually would like to hook my computer to my home theater system. Also want to upgrade components. New mother board go from AMD to Intel. So looking for Motherboard suggestions a really really good one and best CPU below 500.00. Should I go Quad or Dual Core.

Thanks

[Gizmokid2005]

Well, if you want to do it all, Ultimate is the way to go. I would hesitate to let you upgrade so soon, I would say wait until SP1 is out for Vista, then consider an upgrade.

[TurcoLoco]

Should I go Quad or Dual Core.
Thanks

Most practical way to answer this question, imho, would be depending on the answer of this question:
Would you be upgrading/replacing your PC in the next couple of years or not?

If YES: I suggest Dual core
If NO: I suggest Quad core

[DEHawk]

I would probably upgrade in a couple of years so which dual core do you suggest?
Also what is a Mobo, a good hard core gaming one. I will wait on Vista until the SP1 comes out.
Also this what I have now,
Nvidia 7800GT
2Gb of ram
2 DVD Burners
3 300 GB hard drives(IDE)
Fatality soundcard
Need a Mobo that is compatible to all of this.
Last going to upgrade to a more powerful Power Supply so I can run all of this plus I have a Water cooling system I want to run.
I assume I need power to run all of this.

Thanks for all the advice

[TurcoLoco]

Hmm, I have not built a system for a long while now (almost a year or may be more) so I really am not up-to-date with certain things.
I am generally an AMD fan but Intel's Dual core E6600 is a great CPU with very good overclocking potential. Mobo will depend on what type of hardware you will be installing in it but from the list you gave I think EVGA's 680 chipset should suit your needs, especially if you are thinking about SLI'ing your video card with another of the same kind: http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/evga_n...li/index.shtml

Your video card is a PCI-Express type right? If not NForce3 would probably your best bet but then it wouldn't be much of an upgrade. I believe your Video card is a PCI-E so you are good to go. Get another card same exact one of what you got (if you can find it inexpensive) and the SLI'ing those 2 7800GTs could get you a performance similar to a single 8800 card. It would at least be close I think. Dual 7900GTs seem to match or even exceed a single 8800 card but of course this would only make sense if you were not going to get vista and want to make use of DirectX 10 down the line, etc. etc.
I say wait for a few others' input on this as well since -as I said before- I am a bit behind times.

Good Luck.