first of all, fps below 50 in what game? quake? sure, you can get away with almost anything. crysis 2? different story.

core 2 duos are great cpus, i had one for 4 years iirc, before i got an i5. you do notice the higher clockspeed though, so i agree that you'd want to stick to at least 2.2, 2.4 or 2.6 would be even better of course. my core 2 duo was one of the really early ones and it ran at 1.8ghz and that definitely hurts performance. if you're getting a dual core intel, than price is going to be low across the board, so you may as well get the highest clockspeed cpu you can.

2gb of ram is tiny. on top of that, ram is super cheap. i picked up 8gb of pc3 10666/ddr3 1333 ram for 45$ (CAD).
you should get at least 4gb, 6gb would be better.

in general, i'd stay away from getting winxp this late in the game. especially if you plan to get more than 3.5gb of ram. if you can nab the winxp 64 version that's fine, but i don't know how fiddly that version is compared to 64bit win7. 

cheers guys,

didn't know about intel i5 or above, i'll watch for that in my perusing.

so, a core 2 duo with 2.2ghz is not too bad?
it sounds like a good starting point.

i will probably look to have at least 4gig of ram, like you mentioned.

going back to graphics cards:

compared to my nvidia geforce 6600 in my mac, what would be a good step up from that?
i'm looking to spend �50 max, so i'm quite happy to hunt for a good deal if i can find one. 

In a nutshell:

socket 1155 - Z68 chipset

Intel Core i5 2500K or 2550K, or if u have loads of money a 2600K or 2700K

min 4GB RAM (pref 8GB - not expensive, 64bit OS)

GTX 560 is good value for money. GTX 560Ti is faster.

New Radeons came out, and are really fast, but too expensive. But NVidia will surely release their '6' series cards soon.

If you have the money, get a 120GB SATA3 Solid State Drive. Look for 85K IOPS+ and 500MB/s+ read AND write speeds. To install your OS. 

just wanted to chime in and say that the difference of having the OS installed on an SSD is really amazing.
just make sure you find and follow a guide for installing windows 7 on an SSD.
you usually need to enable ahci on your ssd otherwise the installation will not install drivers needed to maximize performance, and fixing that AFTER windows is installed is a pain (i had to do that). 

and find a guide that talks about changing the default windows directories for things like program files and my documents so you can put that on your normal hard drives. 

Did you try running Windows games using Boot Camp? Because usually the games are much faster in Windows than they are in Mac OS X due to driver optimizations. 

i can't. i have a ppc.
one of the reasons i'm looking at getting a pc gaming set-up for games only, nothing else. the mac will be for everything non-game related. 

what is your budget and games do you want to play? 

upgrading to a more recent iMac, which can run many games just fine. Probably more expensive though. 

"i'm looking to spend �50 max"

For the graphics card, for the processor, or in total?

If you are not going 64 bit OS then stick to 4Gig of RAM because 32 bit cannot access higher than that. Vista 32 bit is apparently marginally better at handling memory than XP. The restriction is on total addressable memory, so it is not RAM alone that affects things and as necros says, you will not actuall have all 4gig at your disposal anyway.

But �50...? 

i was thinking about �50 on ebay for the graphics card.
a friend has sent me some ebay links for pc's for about �150, but in need of a better graphics card.

i always run a few years behind the times, even with consoles. i'm not impatient with the need to have to see the 'top' games straightaway.
i'll be happy playing stuff that was new up to about 3-4 years ago. fps, adventure/sneak stuff.

Crysis is always mentioned when talk goes back to having a modern set-up.
i will probably leave titles like that until the hardware i need to run it dirt cheap (a year or two down the line!). 

�250 = ~500$CAD (i'll just work with CAD for now)

cpu: intel i5 2500 (NON k)
- 190$
mboard: asus p8h61
- 90$
memory: anything, it's so cheap... ex: patriot 2x4gb pc3 10666
- 45$
video: not too sure... but any of the older nvidia gt/gts 200-400 cards are probably around 100$ - 130$?

this will come to about 455$.
Now you just need some HDD (SSD is nice but it's not strictly necessary)
50-100$ can probably get you 250-500gb

this is all brand new stuff. i'm sure others will have better suggestions, but you can get quite good stuff for your �250.

you can probably run even crysis 2 fairly well with that. not maxed out at 1600x1200 of course, but better than 800x600 with everything on low too. 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/251001762151?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649

what do you guys think?

a good starting point, and when the other previously mentioned higher spec stuff comes down in price, i will upgrade to that. i shouldn't be needing to do that for a year a two. 

I don't see why you would want to get a Core 2 Duo this badly. Quad core processors aren't expensive, either, and I consider them low- to mid-range standard these days, whereas dual core seems somewhat antiquated already. Also, I'd suggest a graphics card with more memory - there are many 9600GT models with 1024MB. 

9600 - �40 maybe
250SATA - �25 (atm)
That case - �20 lets call it
PSU - �30
DVD - �10
RAM - funny one to value - expensive to buy still but verging on obsolete - �20
Mobo - �20
----
�165

Then u get Vista, another drive, a floppy drive, wifi adapter.

I guess �179 aint too bad.

If you check out the motherboard and cooler, then if you buy some new DDR2 1066Mhz RAM, u can overclock probably. 

..and the bloke's coming round 2moro morning to deliver it personally! 

Why even bother with one? 

so he can install the drivers for his 28.8 modem 

Yeah that is pretty cheap, it'll do if your playing 3 year old games.

Nice lookin case, although those blue lights would irritate me. 

personally i'd feel like I got gypped out of the joyous computer building stage though. Plus, warranties! 

once in a while, after booting up, one of my harddrives is extremely slow. it takes ages just to get file info listed in explorer.
rebooting fixes this.
should i be looking at a new hdd? 

Indexing settings:

http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-7/windows-7-file-search-indexing-options/ 

i have it turned off for that disk, so it's not indexing or anything.
also, i've experienced the type of slow down during indexing before and rhis is a _lot_ slower.
you can't even watch a video because it'll constantly stall waiting for frames. 

Is it defragged? How much free space is not the drive?

If the answer to those questions are 'yes' and 'plenty' respectively, then PANIC!! Get new drive, and back that shit up pronto!!!

Or at least that's my gut reaction.