CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo, not only the best bang for the buck, but also the perfomance kings leaving AMD in the dust right now. If building a moderately budget box, go for E6400, if you have the money, go for E6600 or better.

RAM: 2 GB of DDR2-667, CL5 for budget, 2GB of DDR2-800, CL4 if you are going crazy for perfomance.

Video: NVIDIA 7900GTO or 7950GT for budget or if you want CRAZY speed and DX10 goodness, go for 8800GT or even 8800GTX.

Note that for _ANY_ videocard listed above, a 400W power supply is a recommended minimum, a 8800GTX requires a 430W PSU.. 

I'm waiting for 9900GTX which comes with its own nuclear generator. 

But it's pretty cool that it seems to be a big step in the evolution of graphics cards going from being actual graphics cards and becoming general computing monsters that should be prove very useful for things like audio processing and all kinds of funky stuff that it can do better than the CPUs. 

the whole ATI+AMD thing seem remarkably prescient... :) 

"Hybrid threading has also proven to be an asset in the company's work with Microsoft's multi-core Xbox 360 console, and Valve says it sets them up nicely for what they believe is a "post-GPU" era looming over the horizon" 

anything like hyper threading? 

hype threading ... 

*drum roll* a hybrid approach for how to distribute tasks over multiple threads/cores on the software side. I guess I should have linked to the article in the first place but it wasn't really that interesting in my view but it's about how valve will tackle multi-core processors in the steam engine:

http://techreport.com/etc/2006q4/source-multicore/index.x?pg=1 

but i wish they had more technical details. It read too much like a press release. 

It didn't really say all that much other than "valve took the hard way and did the best possible!" while providing no real technical insight. 

are awesome! 

stop buying new pcs... ps3 is future entertainment!

It makes baby dolls cry! 

Than: shouldn't you be spruiking the Wii anyway? 

stop buying new pcs... ps3 is future entertainment!

Core all the way, baby! 

And it's a much cheaper gold digger than the PS3 anyway. 

lol@ps3
its not out yet and already beaten by 8800 performance
nextgen... my ass

wii has no interesting games so far (except zelda maybe) 

The point of a next-gen console is not to have games that look better then its possible on the PCs. The point is to have GREAT looking games at a pricepoint noticably lower then what you would have to pay for it in the PC world.

In the PC world, 600 euro gets you a PS3 and 650 euro gets you a 8800GTX. But with the latter, you also need a case with a 450W PSU, a motherboard, a fast CPU, RAM, a dvd drive, a harddrive, keyboard and mouse and finally a monitor.

With the PS3, you just need a TV. 

especialy for the PS3 are much more expensive. But then again video rental/trade in stores solve that problem ;) 

Netflix-style video game renting might drastically change how many games I buy. 

I think they do have something like that. I see commercials for something called GameFly... and there's GameTap... I think one of those actually mails you a game disc netflix-style. Not certain, though. 

I also saw one online a couple years ago, but I don't remember if it was one of those. It was the same setup as Netflix, but I think it was more like $30 a month. It might still be worth it, though; especially for someone like me who generally only plays a game once. 

Speeds, no not lazy, just ignorant. I'm asking here because people might actually make sense here.

Like,

Daz, I take your point. At the moment I am playing stuff like Prey, Dark Messiah, etc fine. I don't think I'd have problems with anything released about now, except Morrowind2/Gothic3. So it is more for forthcoming games, Crysis etc. But having a 3 year old PC, oh the shame!!

But, how long do you think it will be before DX10 cards and Quad Core CPUs are reasonably affordable??

Also, if it's going to be a while, but it is definitely worth waiting for that, are there any intermediate simple upgrades I could do? More ram? GFX?

Jago, cheers for that, will bear that in mind, subject to the waiting/not waiting option. 

something to think about could be to get a SLI compatible motherboard and have 2 gfx cards going. 

Hmmmm....

Wouldn't that be a bit much?? 

how much gfx cards are over in england. I wouldnt consider it here in oz, but it seems things are cheaper overseas.