You should refer to this thread. Since we do get it a lot here, it's stickied at the top.
http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1337
The short answer, yes.
Yea definately just save the money you'd spend on the 7000 so you can get the 9800 sooner. And what brinks said, OEM will usally do you just fine if you know enough about computers to find the drivers yourself. I wouldn't want to go with OEM for an AIW though, just because a lot of that...
Well SE doesn't mean its HALF the power of the pro. Like a 9800 SE is a better buying choice than a 9600 Pro, because you still get the 9800 Core, and if you wanted to you could pretty easly soft mod it to a 9800, or maybe a 9800 Pro. But even without the soft mod, it'll still probably do ya...
You'd get better use out of the 9600 though than the processor on most of the newer games that lean on DX effects. Go with the 9600 Regular over the SE though, it's better. Unless you know how to soft mod stuff, then go with the 9600 SE.
I think you can find a 9800 SE though for about the...
The simple fact is that ATI won this generation of hardware, and it's their first win ever, they've been playing catch up, and people like to see the under dog win. And they only won with DX effects, the Nvidea is still better for games like doom 3, but those kinds of games arn't quite as...
Damn those futureistic imaginary case removal detection systems.
But no, you'll be fine transfering everything over, like blahblahblah said, it's just like turning off the power and turning it back on. Just make sure you don't blow any of the components out while you transfer.