Yes, I do like to play games, but it is not my #1 priority. As my Q6600 sits now with it's single 8800GTX, I am satisfied with it's performance in playing Crysis. If I have to give up SLI/Crossifre support & OC capability to get multi-core multi-thread power for encoding, then so be it. I won't lose any sleep over it. Again, a big thanks to you all for steering me in the right direction! I'll post in the right section illustrating my build when I get all the parts.