Thanks for the info BlackJack and Smvb. What I meant is that I already have a graphic card (6600) so I didn't want to buy a in-the-box computer that came with a graphic card already.
You don't have to worry about a pre-built system and its integrated graphics card. If you add your own card it simply takes precedence over the on-board and the old one just sits there and does nothing. My mobo has integrated graphics and sound. I use the integrated sound just because at the time I couldn't afford another sound card, but have always gone with a custom video card.
Also, you can build a honey of a computer for less than $1,000. The system I priced out yesterday, not including monitor, was in the neighborhood of $1200, which included a $300 case and a 450-watt power supply. I haven't decided for sure if I want that case or not, though. I'm having a time figuring that out, too! LOL
Here's what I picked (all of this off of NewEgg and I'd imagine prices are subject to change):
WinXP Pro OEM: $146.95
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard (I'm hoping this is the right board--have to double-check to make sure!) $153.99
AMD Athlon64 3700+ processor $215.00
1 gig of either Corsair or Crucial memory: about $100
Cooler Master 450-watt power supply $59.99
Geforce 6800 XTreme 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail: $134.99
2 80-gig 7200rpm SATA Maxtor DiamondMax hard-drives
Then of course floppy drive, DVD burner and stuff like that.
I plan on stopping at a local computer shop when I get into town and see how much they'd charge to put it all together for me. If they'll do it reasonably I'll bring the parts and pieces and they can have all of that kind of fun! LOL
A couple of months ago I posted here asking what would build a good system. Although much of what was said re-confirmed my own thoughts, I learned a lot, too. I saved the whole thing in a text document so I'll just copy and paste it here! I wish I could remember who originally posted it! LOL
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"Let's talk principles instead of specific components. And let's start with that glamourous item, the power supply. To be blunt, the power supplies that come with most pre-built systems are crap. And if you're going to load up a new or rebuilt machine with a hot new motherboard and CPU, a high-power video controller (even the Radeon 9800 Pro requires its own power connection), a couple fast HDDs, a CD-RW and a DVD burner, that POS 300W power supply isn't going to cut it. Get yourself a quality power supply rated for at least 450W from a reputable manufacturer (PCP&C are the best, but the top Antec models are okay). Pay particular attention to the regulation, and don't settle for anything worse than ±5% on any of the + voltage lines ("rails")--±1% is preferred, and ±3% is acceptable. Inadequate power can lead to graphics corruption, spontaneous reboots, and worse. Power output declines as temperature increases, and the cheap power supplies can't supply their nominal rated power at normal operating temperatures.
Plus, with a quality power supply, you'll get a quality power-supply fan, one that is less likely to fail and cause your PC to catch fire, probably in the middle of night, thus burning down your house. This is no joke, and something for those of you who run your PC 24/7 to consider. I used to know a Web site with photos of burned PCs, but you just can't find anything useful with a Google search anymore. With a new power supply, you can get dedicated SATA power connectors for your new SATA hard drives.
CPU choice comes down to a price/performance calculation, and whether you want to buy a new motherboard (recommended if you current one is more than a couple years old, since you'll need Socket 939 for AMD or Socket 775 for Intel). AMD vs. Intel? Take your pick. In benchmark testing, AMD wins some and Intel wins some. AMD is currently the big winner for gaming, while Intel still wins for some high-intensity image and video processing. It once was the case that Athlons were hot and P4s cost more, but these days the Intel chips are hotter and the upper-end Athon 64s cost more than equivalent Intel CPUs. Intel has an advantage by supplying its own chipsets for its CPUs, while AMD relies on third-party suppliers with an uneven track record of stable products. Athon CPUs gain a performance advantage by having the memory controller on the chip, but this restricts you to DDR for now while the Intel CPUs have large on-board L2 caches and can use the most current RAM technology, DDR2 (if the motherboard supports it). This could provide a cost advantage to AMD.
The most value for money in a CPU is usually found a couple steps down from the current top of the line. In this particular instance, you're probably better off not going for that next-higher model for just a few $$$ more--use the money instead for the next-higher model graphics board, which should probably give you a bigger performance boost in TS2. You shouldn't need an after-market heatsink/fan (or water cooling) if you don't plan on overclocking the CPU. For TS2 and most (all??) other games, a dual-core processor is uneccessary as the game won't take advantage of the second core in any significant way, if at all. But if you use some other apps like Photoshop a lot, a dual-core CPU might be worth the premium price--you would need to see which apps you use can take advantage of the dual cores.
Graphics board/video controller: Get the best you can afford (although a $500 model is probably overkill). Make sure you have room for the cooling aparatus, since the heatsink/fan assembly on most current upper-end models will block the adjacent PCI slot. If you're buying a new motherboard, make sure it has PCI Express instead of AGP, and get a PCI-Express video board (fortunately, the PCI-E boards are slightly less expensive than their AGP counterparts). DON'T buy a reduced-performance OEM or "SE" model to save money--these are usually low-performance versions of the retail boards, made for the big manufacturers like Dell and HP. You are going to want at least 256 MB of DDR3 memory with a 256-bit memory interface. Be sure you will have a spare power connector for the card.
RAM: 1024MB, or more if you can afford it (but only after getting the power supply and video card). Don't get the cheap no-name stuff--there is a difference, so stick with quality brands like Crucial, Corsair, OCX, and Kingston. In the US you can buy Crucial direct at decent prices. You probably don't need the varieties with platinum heat spreaders and LEDS unless you're planning on overclocking your memory.
Hard drives: If your motherboard has serial ATA connectors (SATA), then by all means get SATA drives, preferably ones that have a native SATA interface and implement command queuing. Many SATA drives on the market, especially older models, are really just parallel ATA drives with a SATA connector added. Two drives are better than one! Given a choice, take two smaller drives over one large drive. Any version of Windows will work better if you can put the paging file at the beginning of a separate physical drive from the one on which Windows is installed. With SATA drives, I believe each motherboard connector will accept only one drive, so multiple drives on a channel isn't an issue (and shouldn't be anyway with a serial device), so you would have each HDD on its own cable, and your optical drives on a separate IDE channel (another advantage of SATA, as many motherboards with plain old IDE connectors provide only two channels). Even if you have parallel drives, try to have each drive on its own cable, and don't an optical drive on the same cable as a hard drive (double up the HDDs on one cable if you have to). Avoid 5400-RPM drives--7200 or 10K (Western Digital's Raptor drives) are the way to go. Be sure to get an on-board cache of at least 8 MB.
Motherboards: PCI Express instead of AGP, Gigabit Ethernet, Serial ATA, three fan headers (instead of one), and enough PCI slots for everything you might stick in your PC while leaving room for Slot 1 to be blocked by the graphic card's heatsink. RAID is an unnecessary luxury, but having plenty of SATA connectors as well as the standard two IDE connectors is not.
Sound Card: A SoundBlaster Audigy 2 will still sound better than any onboard audio, and because it has its own DSP, it takes the audio load off the CPU.
If you're going to buy a new case, it's better to have one that's bigger than you need than one that is too small. And a large case should ventilate better. Look for a case that's well-finished inside (no sharp edges), has sufficent drive bays for everything you want to install (including the breakout box for your new high-end SoundBlaster), and offers good air movement. An extra fan in the front and two in the back can be valuable. A 120 mm fan will move the same amount of air as an 80 mm fan but at a lower speed, hence less noise.
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