Originally Posted by reno96teg

in that case, a good vid card is a hell of a lot more important than getting the fastest possible processor. at minimum go radeon 9800 pro or the nvidia fx 5900 ultra.

from my experience, stay away from VIA chipsets. i've always found them to be severely unstable.

and finally, no matter what the AMD zealots tell you, Intel > AMD. they may look nice in the benchmarks, but when it comes down to actually doing the work, Intel wins.