Looking for advice on build

Hello DS. I'll get straight to the point-- I need help with a build and would like to know what DS and its community recommends. To make this easier on the eyes, as opposed to a wall of text I will make my plea for help & advice, a list.

My budget : 1000-1750 dollars (Tell me why I should go higher-- I know I probably should with my kind of expectations)

Expectations : I am looking for a computer that can handle everything I do with high stability and lush graphics and audio. The key is: stability and high, high quality.

Usage: I will be using this compute for multiple things. For work (graphic designer), for recording (sound engineer), playing games and for simple messaging programs such as MSN, Ventrilo and browsing the web.

My special needs: I am mainly looking for a new build due to the fact that Guild Wars 2 is coming out soon, and I am very excited for it. Also, my current PC is a hunk of poop and would like to upgrade, but would like to unload everything I can onto it so I can feel good with a monster computer besides me.

-I am expecting stable, max frame rates on the next generation games such as Guild Wars 2 on highest possible graphics.
-I will be running 3 monitors, So will probably need to go with SLI. Monitors are at this state, unknown since I will purchase them after the tower. Most likely around 26" each.
-I am an audiophile, and will be using very expensive headphones on the computer, so a good soundcard will probably be necessary.
-I will also be doing a not of processing with hundreds (or thousands) of vst plugins while recording so I think an i7 is something I should go for as opposed to i5s.
'
Note:
I also find the look of SLI'd video cards highly attractive.

I'd truly appreciate some help & advice. Thanks.

Guild Wars 2 doesn't have any specifications released about it, and they won't give anyone any hints about what it will be like. I'm assuming it will just be safer not to SLI? Monitors wont be a problem, I have a whole crapload of them (for whatever reason, I guess I just have a lot from previous computers) and will probably use the best ones out of those.

Also, currently I am at 1600x900 x2. I honestly don't know what it would be like if I would have a third monitor that runs at a different resolution than the ones I have today.

Should I go for GTX 460 or 480 x2?


Edited by nignog - 11 May 2011 at 4:28am

Seriously, guild wars 2 not working with SLI?  Guild Wars right now works fine with SLI and its an OLD game.

And just an FYI ironwolf, Guild Wars doesn't support SLI.

There is no point in spending money on sli if you are not giong to use it, that is the problem with sli, $1000 worth of money thrown away, unless he does other games.

Some games do have problem with sli, I have seen many people complain about fps drops or other problems with different games.

Battlefield 2, Bad Company 2 are fps games, you are not gonna have problems with those types of games, but with some mmo games sli can cause problems, some have issues for example with wow and sli and some don't have any issues wiht wow and sli, each case it different, our individual experiences does not represent everybody else's experience.



Edited by DST4ME - 11 May 2011 at 3:57pm

ATI is better for multi monitor setup specially 3 or more.

because you can connect upto 5 or 6 monitors with one card, 3D is nvidia's thing, multi monitor is ati's thing.

start with a single 6970 but have room to add another, for res of 2560 x 1600 or higher we recommend cf 6970 or 580 sli, the 6970 cost less and has more vram.