If I may ask, why do you have a preference for Radeon and Intel?

AND... is there an advantage of 8gb of ram over 4 gb of ram?

AND.... what are the advantages of "crossfire" or "SLI"? Would one top end card do pretty much the same thing as two mid range cards?

I'm sure I'll have more questions...lol

In answer to your first question, intel currently has much better performance. the Intel Core2 Duo destroys the AMD Athlon Series of processor, in everything. The AMD Phenom doesnt really help them any either. The only ATi Cards i really like are the HD 3850 and HD 3870. Most other ATi cards arent worth the money. But those two area far better than any midrange NVIDIA card for the money.

to the second, no. and if you are running windows 32bit, if you run 4GB or more, the OS will only see 3.25GB. It is the most a 32bit system can access.

To the third, ATis crossfire and NVIDIAs SLi, are methods of connecting 2 or more graphics cards to "double" performance. the increase you see actually depends on how well the system and cards scale with it. It depends on the cards. 2 HD 3850s in Crossfire will beat out or match a 8800GTX. 2 8600GTS will beat out a single 8800GTX. It all depends on the cards you are comparing.

Good info....

Let my brain process that and I'm sure I'll have more questions.....thanks

no problem