Aight folks, I'm a serious gamer who plans on playing BF 2142, C&C 3, and Crysis a lot over the coming months/years.

Here's the proposed damage:
1. Asus P5W Deluxe
2. C2D E6700
3. 2 x 1GB OCZ Titanium Alpha 4-4-4-12 at PC6400/DDR800
4. 1 x ATI 1950XTX
5. 1 x 74 GB WD Raptor @ 10 K rpm
6. Scythe Infinity CPU HSF
7. Enermax Galaxy 850W PS
...The rest will be harvested and transplanted from my current system including my Audigy 2 and second HDD for large file storage.

And here are the issues for me:
1. D5W <--> P5B Deluxe
Will I want to go Xfire or Dx 10 in the next year?
P5B Deluxe seems to be faster for OCing (due to Bios update and CPU multiplier downward unlock allowing higher FSB) but D5W offers upgrade path to dual Dx9 or Dx 10 Cards. The latter would probably impact hardcore/hi res gaming more than a few hundred more MHZ in OCing on the C2D. Yet OCing the CPU is why I'm spending $430 on RAM! Any comments and is there such a BIOS update for the D5W deluxe?

2. E6700 <--> E6600
Trying for overclocking headroom - nothing is guaranteed.
I could save $200 w/ E6600 but with E6700 I'm investing in a higher likelihood of having an OC-friendly sample, right?

Thoughtful, well-informed comments from the gurus in here will be repaid with many virgins in the afterlife. Oh and I would really appreciate it

1) Go with a P965 based board. Gigabyte DS3 or higher or Asus P5B deluxe. Made for Conroe and Bios(es) updates still increasing their potential

2) Go with the E6600 and put the $200 saved to your DX10 fund. You won't notice the difference, and even if you do and have unlimited money, the price-performance curve drops off so sharply after the E6600 that it's simply not worth it.

3) Can't comment on the RAM.. DDR2 800 at 4-4-4-12 will do you good though. People here seem to swear by Corsair, but should be fine.

4) If you don't plan on upgrading to DX10 right away, good choice.. otherwise, get a 7900 or 1900xt to tide you over in plenty of style.

5) Never owned a raptor.. someone else can comment on that.. no reason why not to though for that extra bit of responsiveness for your system

6) & 7) maybe a nuclear reactor and a swimming pool in preparation for dx10?

Thank you very much for the input, mythos. I appreciate your time in putting that reponse together. I'm still wondering if the P965 mobo will leave me without the upgrade path (SLI/XFire) to that shiny new Dell 30 incher I so irrationally want. I currently have a 21 inch Sony CRT and analog/Aperture Grille seems fuzzy next too these sweet LCDs - so I'm itching to upgrade, but would probably need a dual-card solution i think to play native res - is anyone here actually doing this??? I guess this is an issue for another forum - how well do 30 inch LCDs scale for gaming...

Ahhh.. well, that's one of the very few situations where SLi / Xfire actually might be warranted, and a good reason to prefer 975X. the 965P supprt Xfire but I'd still feel better about it on the 975X, and it's hard to go wrong with the P5W if you have the cash for it.

As far as I know, the Dell 30" runs 2560x1600 - though for that price, why not move up to an HDTV? Depending on what you'll be doing with it of course, but for a little more, Samsung, Sharp, and Toshiba, to name a few, have nice 1080p sets out now or due before Christmas.

Good luck and happy shopping Putting everything together is almost as good as being blown away by the visuals afterward

The Abit AW9D-MAX is by far the best OCer for the 975X chipset, but when you used a dual gfx setup the only PCI slot becomes blocked. Have a look at it just in case you can live with its onboard codec.

The E6700 does come from a higher binning than the E6600, but you dont need to spend that much in RAM. Pick a DDR2 800 with 4-4-4-12 thatll hit 500Mhz CL5 @2.2v (almost everyone will but better to research). You wont go farther than 500Mhz FSB on a current mobo anyways.

oh, and wait for 8800GTX.

Hmm.. anyone else think the RAM is overdoing it? In past builds I felt that the RAM was holding back my OC. But if these mobos are going to be the bottleneck then I may reconsider....any other opinions on this guys? thnx!

In any case, for your own peace of mind get the SuperTalent 2GB kit newegg is selling for $270 i think. Those will go to 500Mhz at those timings and if you loose them and add some voltage youll hit 600Mhz, this would only be possible with memory dividers of course.

I built a similar system just last week as an upgrade over my 64 3400. Cost was probably around $2300 because I buy everything at my favorite large electronics store, usually on sale. I'm 5 minutes away and they have a very good return policy considering todays computers have quite a bit of compatibility issues. IMO I would pay the extra buck instead of waiting for internet returns.

CD2 6600
P5W DH Deluxe
Corsair Twin 6400 cl4 2x1024
300g sata
ati 1950xtx
P180 antec
thermaltake 750w p.s and external water cooling system
Pioneer burner and X-fi gamer sound card

I had to make 3 returns before I settled on the top setup. Initially I bought a Gigabyte Dq6 motherboard. Nice packaging and features, but I didn't care for having to take the backplate off for bracket placement for an aftermarked fan or water cooling. Also although it had 2 pcie video slots, slot 2 only ran at 4x instead of utilizing 2 8x's. And benchmark tests were less than the 9awd and Asus boards according to Tom's.

A 700w cooler master power supply was returned since it wouldn't boot the system up. I exchanged for a 750 thermaltake that was twice as expensive, but designed for xfire/sli. System fired up immediately.

OCZ ram was exchanged for Corsair before I even opened the package. I just took the cheapest 6400 ram they had (platinums 2x1024 for $280).
Later I read on forums lots of people having compatiblity issues with this ram, so I returned it before checking to see if it would work. Corsairs have been running great.

The 1950xtx was probably overkill, but iI don't plan on jumping to DX10 cards immediately or any other computer upgrade for a couple years. Besides it's much faster than my previous video card.

So for Xfire it's pretty much 9awd or P5W DH. As mentioned before you lose the lone pci slot going Xfire, so I got the P5W DH and a X-Fi card.

So the only think I would change on your setup is the ram and use the money you save dropping to a 6600 on a good water cooling/air system.

How far have you overclocked in that setup? *just proving my point hehe*