Hi guys about to build a new system, my first, well that ive built from scratch.

Heres what im thinking:

Core 2 Quad Q9450 2.66 £200
MSI X48C Platinum Intel X48 £150
OCZ 4GB DDR3 £150
GeForce GTX 260 OC 768 £200
Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB £90
OCZ GameXStream 700w £90
Antec Twelve Hundred £100

Torn between the 260 and the 4870.

The case is meh, anyone know anything classy and cool the antec's a bit flash but good features.

Its for gaming and 3D moddeling, zbrush, maya, photoshop etc.

Would like to OC but never tried watercooling, may buy a decent cpu cooler or could go for a cheaper build but with watercooling.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Everything except the gpu. If you don't game at all, look into a professional workstation card like Quadro FX or FireGL, whichever is supported by all the software you run. These expensive cards are designed for 3d rendering. ebay has some of them for cheap.

Also look into Xigmatek HDT-S1283.

so a 4870 is the smart choice right now? i've thought aboout a proper workstation card but i can't justify the price for the ammount of gain it would give me.

That Xigmatek HDT-S1283 looks quality, will be adding that to the build.

also what level/Ghz could i expect to achive from overclocking the Q9450 on the xigmatek?

Hence, ebay:

http://computers.search.ebay.com/q [...] QQsbrsrtZd

I'd pick up FX 1000+ for less than $200.

Overclockability isn't guaranteed. I would expect to get over 3Ghz out of the combo.

As i understand, it wouldnt be possible to have both a quadro and a 4870 and simply switch between, is this correct?

Choosing the quadro would severly limit its gaming power i presume? but obviously bring hardware rendering on the maya side.

Bassicly my question is, which is going to limit me more?

Thanks for your info on the OC, i was looking for a ball park figure, i understand no two proccesors are the same due to yeilds and whatnot.

Sorry, I totally missed gaming in your post. Go with HD4870. Yes, it will be slower than Quadro in 3d rendering, but I don't think you're staring at the computer while it's rendering which may take hours or even days. When you game, you want optimal performance.

Ive just been shopping around and found a Leadtek GeForce 9800 GX2 for £200 would this be more powerful than the 4870 with it being a dual card?

and one last question, is it worth going for the DDR3? or would it be better to spend the difference on a better gpu.

9800GX2 is faster, but it's DX10 whereas HD 4870 is DX10.1. I'm not aware of any DX10.1 cards from nVidia. However, HD 4870 Crossfire is faster than 9800GX2 in most games:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] i=3354&p=5

DDR2 is the best bang. Use the savings to upgrade the gpu if needed.