BUYING NEW PC NEED HELP

ok so I desperatly need to upgrade my pc and I dont want to spend too much on it (about $1k) but I want to be able to play demanding games and work on multimedia programs with no lag.

so far I have decided on: and this is the cheapest i have found:
Intel Q9550                           - $423
9800GTX+ 1GB   - $292
G.Skill NQ 2(or 4)GB 1333 DDR3 - $79 (or $99)

But i have no idea which motherboard to get. Obviously it needs to support DDR3 RAM and a quadcore cpu.
i was thinking about a asus p5q3 ddr3 but im not really sure

which motherboard should i get? and have i made good choices with everything else?

NOTE: prices are australian dollars

I have no brand prefferance, but for me and optimal mother board would be a full size ATX that supports your Intel processor (www.newegg.com is a great place to order from) look at how much L3 cache it has, how many ram slots it has, how many PCI express and what speed the pci express slots are. I can tell you from experience that the nVidia graphics card MUST be inserted into a PCIe slot and will cover 2 slots (one it plugs in and one that has a fan for cooling), also make sure it supports USB 2.0 and compare how many USB 2.0 slots it has. If you are into multimedia programs you may need Firewire (IEEE 1334 i believe). If you want Firewire, make sure that it is the new Firewire because the first version of firewire was slower than USB 2.0 but the new one is slightly faster. ATX is a non-integrated mother board so basically what that means is that you add things to it, so make sure that it has all the expansion slots you need. Also with you running 4 GB of RAM, I would strongly recommend a 64 bit operating system so that it will recognize and use all of the RAM and CPU. 32 bit operating systems don't use a dual core or quad core processor to its full potential.

what exactly is this fire wire i hear so much about?

slain4ever wrote:

ok so I desperatly need to upgrade my pc and I dont want to spend too much on it (about $1k) but I want to be able to play demanding games and work on multimedia programs with no lag.

so far I have decided on: and this is the cheapest i have found:
Intel Q9550                           - $423
9800GTX+ 1GB   - $292
G.Skill NQ 2(or 4)GB 1333 DDR3 - $79 (or $99)

But i have no idea which motherboard to get. Obviously it needs to support DDR3 RAM and a quadcore cpu.
i was thinking about a asus p5q3 ddr3 but im not really sure

which motherboard should i get? and have i made good choices with everything else?

NOTE: prices are australian dollars

DDR3 supported motherboard is not cheap unless u get AMD chipset. If not, i suggest u stick with DDR2-1066 OC rams.
P5Q3 is a xfire board, why u get Nvidia card?

Firewire is something mainly used on Macintosh computers, but firewire 400 is being used on PC's for devices like video cameras in leu of USB. Turns out I miss spoke; Firewire 800 (transfers at 480kbps) is only on Macintosh. PC's only get firewire 400 which is a much slower transfer rate than USB 2.0