My turn for a budget sytem

All from New Egg

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Conroe 1.86GHz $187
ASUS P5LD2 R2.0 $103 (so I can keep my current IDE and EIDE stuff
Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) $164
XFX PVT73GUGD3 GeForce 7600GT 256MB $120 (doesnt need a PCI power plug)

I will use my same case , HD, PSU, DVD burner, etc.

Tax and shipping almost exactly $600. I am running an old P4 2.4, 512mb, 6800 card and am sick of the lag and poor frame rates playing bf2142. This rig is about 3 years old.

I would want this to work for me about a year when I might get a new board, go SLI, and upgrade to Vista so I would like to keep the CPU and memory 2+ years.

Sounds pretty sweet. You might want to consider the E4300 instead of the E6300. I dunno how well your ram clocks but I imagine it would be easier to max it with the E4300's higher multi. Good luck.

Also take a look at the Biostar TFORCE 965. I think it's about the same price as the board you selected.