Wanting to buy a pc that handles 5box well..

[Bollwerk]

*ahem* just a heads up: the new HD2900-serie, according to the word on the "street, scored higher than the 8800 serie and it's cheaper.

I assume you mean the 3800 series. It is comparable (although slightly less) to the new 8800gt in both performance and price. (the 3870 specifically - the 3850 is lower price/performance than both)
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/...adeon_hd_3800/

In the end, the Radeon HD 3870 is far from being a revolution, despite what its name and the Direct3D 10.1 compatibility might suggest. Anyway, thanks to its slightly higher clock, due to its greatly reduced process (55 nm), it manages to outgrow the HD 2900 XT on the majority of games, despite a smaller bandwidth (see averages next page), but it doesn't reach the level of the GeForce 8800 GT, which remains 11% superior when filters are disabled and 18% when they're enabled. However, this is all the more coherent with its aggressive price, since at less than $200 it proves to be 20% cheaper than the 8800 GT, whose availability will remain weak until January. The performance-price ratio is, as of today, slightly better for AMD, which took the opportunity to correct the consumption and noise level, without however matching NVIDIA, once again.

[kalih]

Just FYI, I pretty much have the setup suggested above (4gig of ram, q6660 quad-core cpu, 8800gt), and it works great. I geto 50+ fps everywhere.

You won't need two GPUs. You won't need Vista as long as you are OK with using horizontal-span for your two monitors. If you want to have it setup has two separate displays, yes, you'll need Vista.

I got my PC for $1000, without monitors.