Opinions/Thoughts on New System

[NeilN]

Current:
Asus P4P800 Deluxe
Intel 2.8GHz Hyperthreaded
WD 200GB SATA x 2
Zalman Ultra Quiet CPU Fan
OCZ PC-3200 Enhanced 2GB
AGP Geforce 6600 GT 128MB
Antec Case

Looking at:
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
E6600 2.4G 4MB
WD SATA Raptor 150GB
WD SATAII 500GB 16MB (x2)
Zalman CNPS9500-Cu-LED Heatsink
OCZ DDR2-800 PC2-6400 2GB (2x1024MB)
ASUS EAX1950XTX 512MB
Antec Sonata II with 450W PS

Used for: Work (.NET, database development), multimedia (Divx/xvid video, MP3's, photo manipulation), some games (Civ IV, GalCiv2, SimCity 4)

Current bottlenecks: HD speed, CPU speed

Primary emphasis: Quiet (important), stable, fast PC able to upgrade to Vista eventually as well as quad-core CPUs.

The X1950XTX may be overkill. I want something that can drive 2 DVI monitors at 1280x1024 each (the Geforce 6600 is pretty good at this) and won't have issues with the latest Civ/Sim games with all graphic options turned on (the 6600 is pretty poor at this).

Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[akhilles]

Very solid specs. If you don't overclock, you can drop the cpu cooler. Set bios up to slow down the stock cpu fan.

 

[NeilN]

Is the stock CPU fan quiet enough? The fan which came with my current 2.8GHz chip could be plainly heard over the rest of the components.

 

[akhilles]

I never use stock fans. Like I said, you can manually adjust the fan speed in bios.