Build Advice Need opinions on mobo and gfx card

Got paid today, along with a tax rebate and a couple other things so ive got a bit of disposable income and thinking about upgrading my pc. Now ive decided on my cpu and ram, but could use some opinions on motherboard and graphics card

CPU: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/131950
RAM: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142433

They should OC fairly well together i think (though i am fairly new to OCing so correct me if im wrong). Now for the mobo, i've never OC'd before but been reading a few guides and plan on trying it with this new system. So i'm looking for something that has some fairly good OCing features but it doesn't need to be to extreme, and i was thinking of possibly trying SLi/Xfire (would depend on which card i go for ofc).

Im in two (well actually about four) minds about graphics cards. At first i was thinking of a 9800 GTX or possibly two in SLi, but ive read theyre not that strong a card and theyre a minor upgrade to the 8800 but more expensive. My second thought was a gtx260 but that would almost definitely be a single card at least untill next month. After looking at some benchmarks though it seems the hd4850 comes close but for much less which would mean i could afford to xfire but i've heard xfire isnt working well atm and last time i used the catalyst control centre i wasnt exactly a fan.

Anyway, cheers in advance and hope that made sense, its early and i havent had my morning coffee yet

 

Welcome!

Please go through this hardware guide - http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/10/02/what-hardware-should-i-buy-october-2008/1

I am sure it will answer a lot of your questions, but if you still have more ... shoot.

 

i really think this one's gonna be awesome
http://www.gigabyte-usa.com/FileList/WebPage/mb_080924_ud3/data/tech_080924_ud3_overview.htm
review soon bit-tech staffers?

 

I'd go for the a 4870 1GB card. They are excellent performers. If you really wanted to crossfire, then 4850's wouldn't be a bad choice either, and you get the bragging rights of saying that you have crossfire! Crossfire is scaling much better than it used to, especially on the the new catalyst 8.10 drivers. They've added manual fan control which is a nice touch, and you get something like 20% performance increases in Crysis as well as increases in many other games.

One point though, if you do go for the 4850's, make sure you get one of the ones with a custom cooler, otherwise two reference design 4850's is going to get very hot. The sapphire dual slot cooler 4850 is pretty good value, though not as good as the factory overclocked ones.