This upgrade is going to be ridiculous.

so I am going from this system:

d101ggc motherboard, celeron 1.80 gHz cpu, 512 mb ram 266 mHz, 80 gig WD hard drive with 5400 rpm, and a geforce 7100 gs 256mb graphics card with a 450 watt PSU

to this system: an x38 chipset intel motherboard, either a q6600 or a core 2 duo 7200, not decided yet, keep waggling back and forth on it, 2 gigs of ram, a 640 gig WD hard drive at 7200 RPM, a corsair 750 TX, and a 4850 graphics card, everntually 2 in Xfire.

what do y'all think of them apples? any suggestion given will be taken into consideration and probably changed due to your suggestion, so you have the power to do some good here. also, stories about the oldest rigs you've ever kept operational long past their dying day are strongly encouraged.

I upgraded last March. I had a P4 2.8GHz, 768mb DDR, RADEON 9200 128mb!, and a 80GB IDE HDD.

Thats going from not capable playing any games from 2005 and on, to maxing almost every game.

yeah, I oc'd my 7100 to play fear on lowest graphical quality with still hardly playable framerates. it was a bad time, but the new stuff will be coming to my home soon through newegg, so I'm excited now.bobisforbob

Yeah I think FEAR was the last modern game I played, all lowest settings.

4850 xfired with 4870 wouldn't work,

if you can hold off 1 month and wait until the 4870x2 is released the prices of the 4870 will drop

Why not the E8400 ? It's only 175$ at newegg.

What resolution do you run ? 1680x1050 and lower I would get a 4850, 1920x1200 a 4870.

Did you decide on a case yet ? I would suggest the Antec 300, stylish look not flashy with great cooling and cheaper than the 900 by 40-50$.

RPG is my favorite genre. I liked Vampire Bloodlines, the Witcher, NWN2, Gothic 1 and 2 (old but excellent). I look forward to Fallout 3, let's hope it'll run smooth on the hd4850 because I ordered one yesterday. A Diamond for 150$ CDN no MIR with a free copy of GRID. :D