I'd first like to say Tom's hardware has been a very helpful resource as I've been designing a computer.
Secondly I'd like to apologize for asking you guys to feed me information thats probably been asked about before, but I really want a direct answer.
I'm building my first rig at the beginning of august, and I'm hoping to have a decent computer with only small upgrades in 4 years. Weather or not this will happen, I'd still like to get a kickass computer. Here are the basics.
3.00 ghz wolfdale cpu
4 gigs of ram
The current display I have is a pretty wussy 17 incher.
An Intel MoBo
My question is about graphics cards, and I have narrowed had narrowed it down to what seemed to be the best performance, (over clocking is a possibility) and a price in my range.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814261012It had the basic 8800 specs, a lot of ram, and overclocking easily with an application on included disks. Also after a rebate its 150, even with out its 170 which isn't too bad.
The other contestant is this. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814150287 it seems to be overclockable fast, and cool. But it would also put me a bit over budget,( I can deal with that later)
So what do you guys think. Other suggestions are great too.

Welcome to the forums!
You should take a good look at ATI's 48xx series.
Even the lowly 4850 offers better performance than the 9800GTX and can be had for $169.99.
The big brother 4870 offers ~15% more performance, better cooling and generally competes with the GTX 260 in many games.
In any case the point is really moot.
With a 17" display you will have no problem maxing out every game with even cheaper GPU's.

Interesting, I've heard many times that Nvidea had the edge on ATI. So you're sure a card like this, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814131111 Will outperform even the better Nvidea I mentioned? The reason I want the best card possible is I want to run games on the best settings I can pull decent FPS on for as long as possible without upgrading.
Thanks for the welcome and the info!

With the choices for GPUs out their i would honestly not pick either of the 2 you had linked, especially with a 17" monitor. If i had to pick one it would be the 9800GTX. The outlaws suggestion of a HD4850 is a good one. Powercolor HD4850 at $170 after rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814131111
an alternative 8800GTS 512 would be ECS at $160 after rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814134037
or EVGA 8800GT at $140 after rebate and with an available 90 day step up program
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130359

The new ATI cards have only been out for a couple of weeks, before the 48xx series came out Nvidia pretty much owned the high end graphics card business. Now we have hard core competition going on and i love it.

100% sure it will outperform the 8800GT.
The 4850 trades wins with the 9800GTX but comes out on top overall.

The real power of the 48xx series is in the AA performance.
You have absolute minimal performance drops all the way up to 8x AA (the highest I have seen tested to date).

Especially since you are planning on getting an Intel Mb, seems like a great choice.
If your Mb supports 2 or more PCIe 16x slots you have the option of CrossFireing in the future.

A good P45 with a Q9450 4 gigs of ram and 4870 seems to be top end system on a mid range budget.

Well I spose its going to be this card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814131111
Any other suggestions for a card no more than 200 bucks that will outperform this are welcome.
Thanks guys, faster responses than I would have expected. I'll make usre to post the final results in august.

Nope, no other card currently under $200 will give you better performance. You will probably want to re check prices before you order in August. This market likes to play the pricing game quite a bit. Even then, I doubt you will find a better value.

Best of luck with your first build!
Let us know if you have any problems on the way!

I don't know if I should make a new topic for this, I don't want to clutter the forums, so I'll just ask here. Whats the best Motherboard that will work with the wolfdale 8400 that's under or around 100 bucks, I currently selected this one.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128082 And again thanks too everyone who replied.

EDIT: Will that card overrclock? Or is it still better as is?

The P35 chipset is starting to get a bit aged. I would recommend spending a little more and going with something P45 based. Here are a few that may meet your needs:

Gigabyte EP45-DS3R $149.99
ASUS P5Q-Pro $149.99
ASUS P5Q-E $159.99

The P45 chipset is currently the best overclocker around. The E8400 can also get some massive overclocks. Just make sure to get an upgraded Hs when you shoot for the moon with it. The Scythe Ninja and Tuniq Tower are both excellent coolers. The AC Freezer 7 Pro is also a superior cooler for ~$15 less.

Sorry, almost missed that part.
Right now it is hard to tell. The GPU core is the same as in the 4870 so as long as it is kept cool there should be no problems going to 750Mhz. Currently it is so new that RivaTuner has no support for it. The fastest ATI's overdrive utility will let it go is 700 on the core which can be easily obtained. Either way it is still better than the 9800GTX, even when the GTX is overclocked to match the upcoming GTX+ (a die shrunk and overclocked 9800GTX).

My 22" LG was on sale for 237$...

The 9800gtx is only around 199.99$ now..... I got one and it overclocks better than my previous 8800gt, 8600gt, 7950gx2, 7600gs. You don't need overclocking bundle software. Just get RivaTuner for free. maybe will cost you about 2 mins of time to download and install. Pretty cheap, and on my opinion, best bang for the buck. Just overclock it to 2010 shader, 100% fan, but no memory. (dangerous to overclock memory)