Quote Originally Posted by Krelbel View Post
5) 64-bit. The chips I recommended are 64-bit capable. Don't worry about it. If you plan on getting Vista, then make sure you get the 64-bit version so you can enjoy the benefits, but for everything else, you pretty much don't need to worry about it. If you're seriously going to be putting this machine through its paces, make sure to get a compiler for x86-64, and make sure as much of your software as possible was compiled for it; software compiled for x86 will still work, but it won't take as much advantage of the 64 bit chip as possible. It's not a huge deal right now, since most things are still 32 bit only. Also if you put 64-bit vista on a machine, I hear everything stops working. Figures.
I would avoid 64 bit at all costs. Especially 64 bit Vista. The 32 bit applications won't take advantage of the extra 32 bits of memory space, but 64 bit driver support is awful and a large proportion of 64 bit applications have major stability issues. If you run a 64 bit environment, be prepared for a whole lot of random crashing.

And I think there is definitely cause for waiting for a GPU. At the moment you'll fork out $NZ1000 for an 8800GTX, and $NZ650 for a GTS. Since they're the only DirectX10 compatible cards and yes, the driver support is pretty crap at the moment, buying a 7900 seems like a waste of money.