New computer

[BrianG]

I recently got an EEEPC and was gonna use it as a home webserver (WinXP running IIS6 and SQL Express) for some home stuff, but the lifespan of the SSD drive makes me not want to do this after all. Makes a good workbench PC to research stuff while tinkering though.

So, I started looking around online for a basic desktop system instead, but then got to thinking that anything I got would assuredly be better than my main box. So, I'll probably use my current box as the web server and get a new PC.

I can get pretty decent discounts for HP and Dell from the state because I work for the Iowa Lottery, but I usually prefer to build my stuff so I get exactly what I want. So, I went to TigerDirect and Newegg and looked around. Trouble is, I've been out of the computer loop for some time now and am not up to date about what is good and what is not. These are my questions:

- AMD or Intel? I want dual core, which doesn't seem to be a problem since everything is moving that way now.
- nVidia or ATI? And what speeds/memory should I be looking for?
- Is RAID0 still a viable performance booster? I currently run a set of ancient WD 35GB Raptor drives in Raid0 and they work fine.
- What is a reliable yet fast and feature-rich mobo?

In the past, I found the best bang for the buck to be two notches from the fastest in pretty much anything (CPU, memory, graphics, etc). Still true now?

I don't do a whole lot of gaming, but wouldn't mind being able to throw a fairly current game in and not have horrible framerates. I mostly like driving games (Need for speed, etc). I don't feel I'll need dual video cards for what I like to do. I obviously don't want integrated video.

I don't do that much video editing either. I may "back up" () a DVD every now and then, but that's not editing.

Integrated sound is fine though.

Mostly, I do development work, surf; you know, the typical stuff.