Building new rig: three questions

[shoenberg3]

Hello
For the build so far, I have: E6700 2.66, 2 gb RAM 800mhz, and ATI X300.
Quite obviously, the bottleneck is the X300. I am getting a 8800gtx for a good price in June. Meanwhile, however, I need a mid-level card that could run Oblivion on mostly max settings, considering the CPU and RAM I have now. What would that card be? I do not want to spend over 200 dollars on it.

Another question regards buying a hard drive and setting up XP. I will get a new additional HD and want to install a fresh XP on that one, but I want to keep my older HD without reformatting. How would I do that?

The last question is: would running a DX9 game with a DX10 card on Vista be better looking than running it in XP?

Thanks

[b1gapl]

For the graphic card, I would suggest the 7900GS, which plays most or all games on max.

For the second question, you can take out your old HD, install the new one, install XP, and you're done. If you want to still use the older HD with the new one, just set the new one to master, and the old one to slave.

[shoenberg3]

Is there a particular reason that the old one becomes slave? Isn't it possible to sort of "dual-boot" two XPs so that I could use one for gaming (keeping it spyware free) and one for everything else?

[b1gapl]

I think so, but unfortunately, I don't know about dual booting operating systems. I'm sure somebody else here, will explain.

[turtile]

I would wait for the 8600GT.

You can install XP on the new and old hard drive for a dual boot. If you want to have two XPs on the new drive, you can partition it in two parts with Partition Magic and install a copy on each partition.

[gurusan]

Originally Posted by turtile

I would wait for the 8600GT.

You can install XP on the new and old hard drive for a dual boot. If you want to have two XPs on the new drive, you can partition it in two parts with Partition Magic and install a copy on each partition.

the 8600GT is nothing impressive.

For the OPs price range I would suggest a x1950xt or x1950pro over the 7900GS. If he is going to be playing oblivion then the ATI cards significantly outperform nvidia.

[b1gapl]

But he said he is getting an 8800GTX in June, so he shouldn't spend that much on a graphic card. If he gets the 7900GS, he can overclock it pretty good.

[gurusan]

My vote still goes for the x1950pro...he said he wants to play oblivion and the x1950pro does SIGNIFICANTLY better than the 7900GS in this game

Look at the benchies:
VGA Charts | Tom's Hardware

And 135 after rebate...not bad
Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100176L Radeon X1950PRO 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail

[b1gapl]

Yea I have the X1950PRO, and it plays Oblivion pretty well. I just thought he could overclock the 7900GS, since it's known to overclock well, and it could beat the X1950PRO.

[gurusan]

Originally Posted by b1gapl

Yea I have the X1950PRO, and it plays Oblivion pretty well. I just thought he could overclock the 7900GS, since it's known to overclock well, and it could beat the X1950PRO.

Yeah you may have a point...it just depends on how much the x1950pro can clock as well.

Also the x1950 has the advantage of HDR and AA