One thing to note when looking at CPU benchmarks is that they often use ridiculously low graphical settings to make sure the GPU is not the bottleneck. Usually this results in very high framerates, at which point no one should care that a CPU gets 80 frames per second instead of 70 (it's not a noticeable difference, unlike 20 vs 30 for example).

The "better" CPU in benchmarks often has exactly the same performance as the cheaper one when you run the game with decent graphical settings.

The same argument goes for many of the AMD vs Intel benchmarks. With AMD you buy a cheaper CPU and a cheaper motherboard and end up getting the same performance when running games bottlenecked by the GPU (i.e. most of them).

That said, if you choose AMD you should probably go for a quad core. Games don't take advantage of the 6 cores on the Phenom II X6 (it's a great CPU, I use it myself because I have applications which use all the cores).

CPU: Intel Core i7 2600k (around $350)

GPU: Geforce GTX 480 (around 300$)

You should also get two drives, a normal HDD, and an SSD.

SSDs are usually smaller, but they are much faster than normal drives.

Get the HDD because SSDs are expensive and you'll want more space than what that gives you to store you files. 

What.

Also normally I would suggest a build but AMD just delayed Bulldozer so I'm upset.

What's wrong with that card?

It cannot be overstated how important it is to have an SSD in any new system. It makes every loading operation much, much faster. Booting windows, starting programs and games and loading in games just flows incredibly fast. If you do not get an SSD with a new system it will still feel sluggish and slow, even if it really isn't. Then again, you might not need to buy the absolutely fastest SSD, as the benefits diminish greatly once you reach over the SATA speed.

Since disolitude already suggested a great build, I'll just emphasize the need for an SSD drive... the loading and operation speeds are awesome, even though the drives can be quite expensive. A good HDD setup is an SSD drive for all your programs and OS, and an HDD for all your data.

Have they recently upgraded the 1155 sandy bridge boards to support triple channel? I thought they only support dual channel?

Even if they do, how can you take advantage of triple channel with 2x 4GB sticks? Wouldn't you need 3 of them?

Yeah, its dual channel only for now...my bad.

I noticed that dual channel and tripple channel memory are same price and figured 1155 would support it.

Yeah, good point...I would buy 2 now, and then in a year or two I'd buy another 4GB tripple channel? 12 GB is just overkill today.

As far as your earlier post about CPU benchmarks, I agree. Those bemcharks are done to measure CPU contributions to gaming frame rate and are usually done at very low visual settings so the graphics card isn't a bottleneck. An average gamer could run a game on high settings using a gTX560Ti and a  Phenom II and i7 should give similar framerate.

However if a game is older and is only able to utilize a single core, or someone running 120hz 3D and needs 120 frames per second...CPU does become a bottleneck. My Phenom II and DDR2 memory architecture are screwing me right now... Can't get 60 frames per eye per sec in Crysis 2 in 3D. Its at a constant 53-54 fps... Its fine as Crysis 2 3D is kinda lame and all other games I play are doing ok. Duke Nukem should be blazing fast and good in 3D...