I'm not good with quid conversion from dollars, but if you are planning on playing some PC games in the future the budget nVidia GeForce 9600 GT for ~$170 would be capable for some time now. If you could afford it, it would be a great card.

You remind me of one of my best friends. Weird. :|

I appreciate all of your help but im certain im going to stay with the Q6600 but dont know what fan is good for it because the arctic cooler you listed doesnt fit on the Q6600.-sharp-shooter-

I agree, you definitely should stick with the Q6600. It's a great CPU for the price.

And it comes with a good fan itself, so unless you're really into overclocking the stock fan will work fine.

For the kind of multi-tasking you do, a new quad core (Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 FTW) would be great. They cost around $250 and are absolute powerhouses for what you're talking about.

As long as your current motherboard supports it, you'll be fine.

I agree with above posters, a 9600GT is the best for now because of its price, an it can still max out most of today's graphics intensive games.

And 8600GTS would be a waste of money when you can get a 9600GT.

Oh, and I hope your grandpa isn't hoping for an early retirement XD

Unless he's somehow Bill Gates.

Is he aware how much they can cost and how powerful they can be?

zOMG your grandpa is going to go broke!

Go 8800 Ultra SLI! Nothing can beat that!!

There's no way there will not be a game you can max with SLI Ultras and a quad core extreme in the QX9--- area!

You should get a dual CPU motherboard like the one in the link and destroy all games in the future with it and your two QX9--- series CPUs.

I feel sorry for him, but it was his own doing.

And, take advantage of it and DEFINITELY go with 64 bit Vista. In the future it will be harder to find an XP compatible game and DX10 will be the norm. You don't see Windows 98 compatible games every day, do ya? Well... maybe...

What else could you massively overkill...

I wondered why he wasn't using Ultras in the first video, but that was explained away in the second.

Funny how little of the video you can see with three widescreen monitors connected like that- the top and bottom are cut out and the image would be stretched.

And, he has to show us some close-ups of Crysis on his settings! His framerate is more than solid, but we can't see any details.

Thanks for the help--

I have an idea: if I can re-use 32 bit Vista Home Premium, 2GB DDR2 RAM, and 500GB SATA HDD, I can really bring down the prices. Add that with not getting the TV tuner and going for a GTS, and we're talking hundreds upon hundreds saved.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention! :)