My new pc.... What to buy???

Christmas is aproaching which means its time for me to upgrade again.....

I would like some suggestions on a decent gaming rig that will take me through 2006 without any trouble.

I have a budget of around £1500 for components and the case. I have already decided that about £250 of this will be going on the case and various customisations that I have in mind so this leaves £1250 for components.

I would like some suggestions from you on which technologies I should be looking at.
For example, is DDR2 worth looking into or should I just go for some high spec normal DDR? what motherboards would be any good for DDR2? They would need to support a socket 939 cpu and pci-e.

I am also still undecided on an fx-57 or an x2 4800 cpu and I will be looking at this choice from a gamers point of view. I am not fully convinced that games next year will be making full use of dual core technology - which if so the fx-57 offers the best performance currently. If somebody can prove me wrong then go ahead

The only thing I am 99% sure of is that my grapghics card will be the top of the line new ATI card as I have never really been impressed with nvidia. The remaining 1% is thinkng about 2x x850xt using crossfire (is this even available yet?)

My current hard drive is a 140gb 7200 rpm ide so will I see any major improvements by using a sata drive? I have heard that western digital raptor 10000rpm drives perform well but are they worth the cmpromise? They only hold 74gb and I don't want more than 2 hd's. Leaving me limited on space is acceptable if I am going to see some major differences but otherwise I would prefer to go for 2 large capacity drives.

Anyway I would like to know what you all think and apreciate any advice