Gaming and Rendering System

[guladig]

I'm in the process of wanting to purchase a new system and I have around £1500 to spend.

I love gaming and I also do a lot of video editing, conversions, rendering, graphics, etc. So I'm looking for a balanced system.

I'm considering quad core E6600, 8800GTX, and 2 gigs of good RAM. Also I want the system to be dual boot WinXP and Vista. A friend has said that its not a good time to buy because of availability of RAM, along with pricing and timings.

I'm already considering a couple of 320 gig harddrives, one for system and one for data. Please no suggestions for RAID I don't need it. I am also happy with 19" 1280X1024 resolution LCD's but I might consider a wide screen option. Not really interested in 20" and above monitors.

I love gaming but I find 1280X1024 with some AA and AF absolutely fine and do not have any truck with ultra high res gaming. I have to consider all of the productivity apps that I use and require fast rendering on 3D, Video and the like.

Any suggestions and comments.
Thanks

 

[guladig]

Thanks very much.

Have your specs taken dual boot into consideration. Am I blind or where is there mention of winxp home within the price.
(winxp pro has no benefits for me that I can think of and it takes more system resources anyway)

Also is it true that there is no decent ram around?
What I mean about that is I was told there is no fast memory timing around.
ie. 3.0-4-4-8 (CL-RCD-RP-RAS)as an example. (Im not saying this is fast by the way, its just to explain what I am referring to)

When are the quad cores prices dropping by the way?

But otherwise it looks like I've got a shopping list

 

[guladig]

Thanks again. The memory timing thing was something a friend was advising me on. Thanks for putting me straight on the matter.

Looks like a good list. Cheers