All the information is great. So the narrower specs are looking like this:

Epox 9nda3+ or the MSI K8Neo 2 Platinum Board

3500+ AMD64 .90 nm Winchester

Vid Card- 6600 or 6600GT

Ram- Price around $200-250 Can DDR above 400 be used on the boards I mentioned?

If I had patience:o - wait for nForce4 SLI boards, and get 1x PCI-E 6600GT.
Some would say I have to much patience i.e.-
Current system: Screaming 400 MHz w/128KB l2 , a blazing 256 MB SDRAM, 4 MB AGP Graphics Card. Its going to become the wifes machine.;)

if you're willing to spend a little more on ram, check the PDP on the frontpage : http://www.pc-memory-upgrade.co.uk/