To wait until bull cames out will be wise, i'll not jump right in thoug, early adoption is not a nice way to build your first pc, there's always some tame to do on new architecture, but you can buy the now "obsolete" tech at much lower prices.

No matter how much you spend, in a year the tide will change, with that amount, you can build a seriously fast system right now, and make another step next year.

There's no point on spending 100 bucks for maybe a 15-20% improvement, that amounts to around 7fps.

For what i understand, having to sweat for those dollars, i'll do a two step rig.

Go for a good quad, with stock cooling and speeds, good amount of quality ram (don't bother on high performance kits, it does nothing for real world performance) and vga's like nvidia 560-570, or ati 6950.

Be generous with the psu, 650+ top quality, it will last years and will save you lots of headaches, bad energy supply can give you surprises like higher temps on your vga, bad 3d performance and even unstability.

PD:Custom vgas with slightly higer clocks and better than stock cooling doesn't hurt.

Fangio,

If you are looking for a pre-built system, then you might want to take a GOOD look at MAINGEAR:
http://www.maingear.com/index.php

They have an excellent reputation, and are quite 'reasonable' for being a high end boutique builder.

They used to offer AMD based systems, but it looks like now all they offer are Intel based ones. That's not all bad, but I am a confirmed AMD fan boy and it pains me to see folks like Maingear ignoring AMD.

OH, and don't worry about what some folks are saying about that little fracas sometime back. You and I both know that the history books have it wrong, and that it was really "The War of Northern Aggression". ;)

I'd go for the $450 version of a video card and spend the other $50 on a comfy chair pillow to sit on while you play CoD. ;)

Try Cyberpower pc...use newegg to study the components you want to put in. I usually read most of the reviews before I buy anything. I bought a Gigabyte 890 board, amd 965 processor, 8 gb ripjaw pc 1333 ram, and a corsair 750 psu for my initial setup. The next step is the GPU, either a nvidia gtx 460 or hopefully a gtx 560 with 2 gb ram.

Ok, I took some advice from here and other places and ordered a new system from ibuypower.com


NZXT Phantom Full Tower Gaming Case - White
Intel® Core™ i7 960 Processor (4x 3.20GHz/8MB L3 Cache)
[6-Port] NZXT Internal USB Expansion System + Bluetooth Module
12 GB [2 GB X6] DDR3-1600 - Corsair or Major Brand
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 - 3GB - Single Card
[3-Way SLI] ASUS Rampage III Extreme w/ 4x PCI-E 2.0 x16
1000 Watt -- Extreme Gaming Series
120 GB Intel X25-M MLC SSD - Single Drive
1 TB HARD DRIVE -- 64M Cache, 7200 RPM, 6.0Gb/s - Single Drive
[10X Blu-Ray] LG BLU-RAY Reader, DVD±R/±RW Burner Combo Drive - Black
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium + Office Starter 2010 - 64-Bit
ASUS USB-N13 802.11b/g/n USB 2.0 300Mbps Wireless USB Adapter


Some other little stuff also included but that pretty much sums it up. That came in a decent bit under my budget and from all I could tell it should be able to run this game if not on the highest settings then pretty close, particularly if/when the game is better optimized. I also figure with the SLI capability I can always add another GPU card (dual 580's with 6GB VRAM would have to rock) later when prices come down. I also think the motherboard can allow later upgrades (though not positive on this). The new system should be here within a week or so.

Anyhow, thanks again for all the the help!



Fang

you should be able to drop a bulldozer chip in your current MB :)
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=20482

I think you made a great choice. Let me know what you think when you get it fired up.