I guess I will go for a more expensive 896 MB card then, since I am saving on not getting the extra 6 GB of DDR3 RAM, I will spend a little extra on the GPU and I may have to wait another year or so on the SLI experiment. Thanks again for the advice. I'm off to look for cards :P

If you are going to use Vista or later, memory pooling allows system RAM to be shared as VRAM (much like how integrated GPUs work), meaning games can make use of spare system RAM rather than resorting to using the swap file on the hard drive (which is much slower). Only the most demanding, high-resolution games will need than about 512MB of VRAM, and RAM pooling can handle that last little bit quite effectively (especially if your system RAM is very fast).

I'm having real trouble finding a graphics card I really like, I want one for anywhere from $200-$250. I have been looking at newegg for the past 2 hours and cannot decide on a single one that is really set above the rest. There seems to be no clear cut card that I really want. Any suggestions? Also is it worth it to search for a card that has a HDMI port on it along with a DVI or would a converter work? Do I even need to go HDMI or should I stick with DVI? They are the same quality video right? I do have speakers so I don't really need the sound from the HDMI cable.
I might give up and go with the original card I picked out.

As I understand it DVI and HDMI are identical in terms of video. HDMI just carries sound as well. I'm very happy with my GTX 260. If there's nothing else to set the cards apart, check the software bundles, you might get a free game or two with some of them.

I think I want this card. Any objections or concerns?
EVGA GeForce GTX 275 Video Card - 896MB, PCI Express 2.0 x16, SLI Ready, (dual link) Dual DVI, HDTV, HDMI (w/ Adapter)
If this is it, then I am all set to order it all. Please tell me if you don't agree with any of my rig. I want to make the right choices. It would be stupid to spend $1,600 on a rig and have something bug me. My final concern is the size of the video card an whether it will fit.

A decent mid/high end card with tons of upgradability options for the future. I say go for it.

Gotta agree with that assessment. The 275 is one of the higher end offerings from Nvidia right now before you start getting into the ridiculously priced cards such as the 285 and 295. Go for it.

I went and bought a GTX 295. It is fucking massive.

I am ready to buy then. I will be looking at Newegg and TigerDirect to compare prices tonight and it should be ordered soon. Thanks for the help, I'll tell you guys how it all goes!

Not trying to throw another monkey wrench, but have you looked at the prices on Pricewatch.com?

One final suggestion I'll make is to order as many parts as possible through Newegg unless there's a fairly substantial price difference. This is because they are very easy to deal with in the event that you need to RMA one of the components (there's always a significant chance some component will be DOA or fail shortly after installation, particularly CPUs, mobos, and RAM). While I don't have any first-hand experience with TigerDirect in the area of returns the second-hand accounts I've heard portray return experiences with them as hit or miss.

I ordered $957.94 of stuff from Newegg and $621.83 of stuff from TigerDirect mainly because free shipping and extra offers were more abundant at Newegg. I got a free copy of CoD: WaW and 6 months of CPU Magazine for free. I dunno how mush I will use either, but it is a nice plus. Making my grand total for the whole system $1579.77, just under my budget of $1,600. Thank you again for everyone who helped out, especially you DarrkPhoenix. :)

CPU Magazine isn't the best hardware guy's magazine anymore, I suggest Maximum PC. I always hated CPU Magazine after that wrote columns for it.[url=]

Glad to be of help. And that's some impressive budgeting. I always seem to come out a couple hundred over whatever budget I initially set for myself. Looking forward to hearing how it turns out.

DVI is capable of carrying an audio stream if using a DVI to HDMI cable or converter, although this feature might not be included in budget-end video cards (I'm not really sure). My ATI HD3850 includes HDMI audio output support despite having no physical HDMI port, so you can't tell just by looking at it. Pure DVI-to-DVI does not do audio, however.
EDIT: also note that Windows normally outputs to the "Speakers" jack on the motherboard; if you want it to output through HDMI or whatever you need to set that as the default.