Way out of date

[heyheyhey]

My current box is a Shuttle with a P4 2.4 @ 3.0, and a 6800GT flashed to a 6800U. Laughable at best, I know, but it's still truckin' along. I was looking at doing another build, to maybe come a little more up to date, but I am so out of the loop I don't even know what's what anymore.

When the nVidia 6xxx cards came out, they really blew ATi away - is nVidia still as far ahead now as they were then?

Processors - I know the I7's just came out - they are just quad cores with hyperthreading, correct? Do they perform well enough over the dual and quad cores to warrant the extra cost? What about AMD processors, how are they doing nowadays? What are the best processors for overclocking?

As far as motherboards and memory goes, and particular brands that really excel?

I'm really just looking to get back into the loop on hardware, figured this would be a good start.

 

[TehNomad]

ATI and Nvidia are competitive, depending on your price range. Low end, Nvidia has the 9600GT and 9600GSO and ATI has the HD4670 and HD4830. Midrange, Nvidia has the 9800GT/9800GTX/9800GTX+/ GTX 260 and ATI has the HD4850 and HD4870. High end, Nvidia has the GTX 280/GTX 285/GTX 295 and ATI has the 4850X2 and 4870X2.

The i7s offer significant performance gains and are good value for the money. However, the real costliness of an i7 build comes from the mobo and DDR3 RAM which are both pretty expensive right now.

Gigabyte and Asus are good, and there are quite a few other good manufacturers. G.Skill is the usual recommendation for RAM.