Best Video Card for Gaming Desktop Machine to date?

Okay, I am working on my dream machine, but I am a little lost on the graphics cards nowadays...



Now, I am not too wrapped up on price when it comes to Graphics card...



I take it that currently 2 GB cards are about the "top of the Line" for now correct?



So far, I am going with quad core... 8 gb memory... and unsure on what card to go with...



Any ideas??



Also for extra credit, I am torn between going ahead and going for Vista 64 bit ... or sticking with XP PRO...



Suggestions anyone????|||If you're just looking at video RAM to determine performance, you're going to be fooled. In reality, the GPU specs don't mean anything by themselves. You have to look at performance.



The best desktop video card to date is the nVidia GeForce 295GTX.



You should go with Vista. It's vastly superior to XP and has DirectX10 as well. Or you could wait until Windows 7 comes out. It's awesome.|||The best card is the EVGA GTX 295 Hydro Copper.

You can read the test and all the rest of the available video cards here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/rade…|||GTX 295. You can purchase the normal version or some factory overclocked versions with water cooling that are especially shiny.

As for OS, go with XP all the way. Vista might have DX10 but there are so many problems with it in every other way it is not worth it. Vista will slow down your system a lot compared to XP.

Also, with the video cards, if you want to make your dream machine as best as it can be, you're going to need to get four video cards running on SLI. What CPU are you using?