You could get away without it but you tend to get better sound quality out of a discrete soundcard. There was a thread a while back with people discussing it, can't seem to find it, the general consensus was that soundcards take a small amount of work off the cpu and delivers better quality

Too small to even be noteworthy. I've only seen one game that supports XRam, and it doesn't work properly. I used to be a Creative fanboy but their drivers really suck. One other point about descrete sound vs onboard, it only matters if you have a 4.1 speaker setup or larger imho.

Yup Ati was DX11 ready what 6 months before fermi finally got released? Though I recommend waiting a couple more months as the new ATI generation is due out in Q3
Also the 265 isn't DX11 its DX10 (possibly 10.1 can't remember off the top of my head)
As an aside the HD5770 is good for upto 1920x1080 which seems to be becoming the standard for sub 30 inch monitors over that I'd go with the 58xx and as an added bonus they use 100+ watts less than the 4xx series from Nvidia

Shit, I said GTX265, I meant GTX465!

I had a feeling ;) also looking at it you can get crossfire 5770's for not much more than a single 465 which they will soundly trounce infact i cant find anywhere advising the 465 at any price point..

*reads this right after mucking about with X-Fi Prelude driver packages and ALchemy in order to get Thief 1/2, Deadly Shadows, and the mic input all working properly*
Yeah, Creative needs to sort out their drivers big time. It's not as bad as it used to be, but still...
Nevertheless, I still won't do without the X-Fi. Not after getting my Audio-Technica ATH-AD700s. These cans with CMSS-3D Headphone give me some downright astounding surround imaging, enough that I don't really want 5.1 or 7.1 speakers any more-and I can only imagine how much better true audiophile-grade cans would make it.
Once you get used to it, you might even start getting accused of wallhacking...

Yeah, Creative needs to sort out their drivers big time. It's not as bad as it used to be, but still...
I haven't totally abandoned Creative, however the quality of their hardware has gone downhill.
As an example i currenty own about 4 of the cards ranging from the SBlive to X-fi, the sad news is that my X-fi no longer functions at all, however my SB32 awe still works perfectly.
Playing on onboard audio is just painful and i'm planning on buying yet another card, i'm just trying to justify the cost.

I've never had trouble with the creative drivers, their bundled fancy software is utter shit but its been utter shit ever since I've been using creative gear

When building a PC I ask only one question to myself.
Can it play Crysis?
If it can play Crysis with DX10 and all the pretty effects at max then I am happy. That is until Stone Giant comes out then I'll have to get an HD6000 series card (sorry nVidia).
Sorry double post:
Get an HD5870 videocard from AMD (ATI), preferably the XFX one
http://www.gpureview.com/amd-launches-the-hd-5000-series-with-spectacular-reviews-article-810.html
Run it on an ASUS Crosshair IV motherboard
http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/10/asus-crosshair-iv-extreme-mainboard-supports-mix-and-match-gpu-s/
4 GB+ DDR3 1600mhz RAM minimum (Corsair and OCZ are rock solid)
An AMD Phenom II 965 Black Edition Quad Core CPU
http://www.techwarelabs.com/amd-phenomii-965/
Less than 1000.00, MUCH less.

personally i'm trying to put off an upgrade till next year, new generation of CPU's coming out from AMD to compare with new intel plus ATI's new graphics generation mean if i can wait till early next year i will.. unfortunately my 8800 is doing the bumpgate thing so may die sooner than i hoped.

Yeah, I'd wait a bit longer if I could, but (I really should have mentioned this earlier, no idea why I didn't.) I'm bringing it to college this Fall.
I'm planning on leaving this in my room and bringing a netbook or cheap laptop to class. Do you guys think this is a good idea, or am I out of my mind? Any netbook or laptop recommendations would be much appreciated as well. :-)

Here is another great guide: http://www.tweakguides.com/Hardcon09_1.html
Helped me out a lot. Going for a AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Thuban 6 Core Processor/1600mhz DDR3 RAM myself. Cpu isnt much more than the 965 and should last me much longer. Probably a 5870 gpu in the future, trusty 4830 for now.

Dell Mini 9, its what I bought to take to uni and I've gotten way more use out of it than I ever thought I would. I was regretting it the second I hit the purchase button because I was sure my giant hands would never be able to adapt to the smaller keyboard (its about 3/4 the side of a normal laptop keyboard) but now I have a bit of trouble with the proper sized ones.
About the only negative of it is that many websites aren't made with netbooks in mind and so load very slowly or have popups that go beyond the boundaries of the available screen space which is a bit annoying but a minor inconvenience overall

Hmm well southern islands is due out in q3 so it /might/ be worth waiting till the last possible second to get your graphics card though i wouldn't be suprised if the price of ATI cards goes down this week if the rumors over the new nvidia cards stats is true (same as a 465 unless tessalated then it drops down to slower than an ATI 5450 apparently).