SoW-BoB technical question

[Thunderbolt56]

All good advice and since I'm not adept at implementing the use of crystal balls, I can only give my opinion. First, I'll too say...get a quad. The newest flight-sim on the market right now (Rise of Flight) was developed and optimized for quad-core processors and the average quads right now are substantially outperforming the average dual core rigs. That's not to say dual-core machines are old news, but more and more programs are being written with multithread capability and a quad is the way to go...period.

As far as graphics cards go, I'd get a nice mid-level GTX260 core 216 card and wait until Fall or even Spring to get a next-gen card. The 260 is an excellent card that runs most everything right now with very high (or max) settings just fine as long as the processor is up to the task. I'm not a fan of SLI or Crossfire and feel a really good single-GPU card is best for me, but that may change.

Sound cards? If I'm on a budget, I'd use onboard sound and be done with it. If not, I'd just get the latest version of whatever several manufacturers are peddling. I opted for the PCIE Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion, but most any will be slightly better than onboard sound and sometimes provide slightly improved framerates in CPU-intensive applications...like flight sims.

I built a Core i7 rig recently and I really like the triple channel RAM (not to mention the absolutely insane overhead the 920 has for overclocking) and can highly recommend them. The processors aren't too expensive and neither is the RAM, even if you get 6GB of low-latency, high-speed stuff. But the motherboard was a sticky point for me as I hated spending almost $300USD on one for this platform.

Future-proofing a computer is a cr@pshoot and you certainly don't need an i7 to get fast quad that runs like a screamer. Look into the Q9550's, LGA 775 mobo's that support it and get the lowest-latency 4GB kit of RAM you can afford and you should be fine for relatively little dough.

edit: Alien, that rig is ancient by today's standards and even a decent dual-core will make you feel like you just entered light speed compared to a single core P4 rig. I would still recommend leapfrogging the duals though and going with a quad.