Then you insult the Kirk...

Nah I just prefer Picard over Kirk :P

I was out saving the galaxy when your grandfather was in diapers!

I'm very confused now. You say you don't want to spend a lot more money for a little more performance, but then you want an "uber" CPU? Which is it? You can get 80% of the performance of the uber for about 33% of the price, OR you can build the best system ever.

For good value and max settings in all non-Crysis current games at your monitor resolution, a Phenom II X4 920 / Radeon HD4870 / 4GB DDR2 is probably the best choice.

For a no-limit uber system, the Core i7 965 / 2x GTX295 / 6GB DDR3 is the best system. That will give you about a 20% boost over the system above at about three times the price.

@Squillam: The GTX285 is not a good choice. For the vast majority of games, the HD4850 X2 is faster at a similar price.

A Phenom isn't that much cheaper than the Core I7 once you factor everything in.

Also single gpu >>>> multi gpu for ease of use, reliability and for the fact that when crossfire/sli doesn't work it sucks.

I also want something that will last me a while. My laptop now has a dual core. Why keep with what I have now? Why not move onto a quad core and have that last much longer? I see it as being cheaper in the long run. Hopefully in the next few months the prices on th I7 core will go down and I will be able to get one cheap. :]

Yes; the Phenom and Core i7 are both quad-core. Core i7 is faster; Phenom is cheaper and will do for most situations.

I can tell you for certain that Core i7 prices will NOT come down. It is an enthusiast-only part and the mainstream (i.e. sub-$266 and sub-$200 motherboards) parts are coming October to December branded Core i5, and they will be much slower than the top-end as they have dual-channel memory and less cache. Also, if you buy Core i7 then future CPU upgrades will cost at least $266 because Intel's enthusiast (>$266)  LGA1366 socket is incompatible with their mainstream LGA1160 socket.

But if you're willing to pay the price and keep on paying in the future, then I'm not going to pretend AMD is faster. Core i7 has absolute dominance.

This is awkward coming from you Squill. Do u have a cost example showing the difference between a Phenom platform vs Core i7?

I saw somewhere, but I forgot where!

Phenom 940 platform $1150, Core I7 platform $1350 is what I saw.

On that site the CPUs cost the same the difference really is in the motherboard and ram (which has come down in price a lot) and TBH the ability to run both SLI and Crossfire in a high end platform is something which should be valued.

1. "Also single gpu >>>> multi gpu for ease of use, reliability and for the fact that when crossfire/sli doesn't work it sucks."

Come on, you can't have it both ways.

2. Also, why would you want BOTH SLI and CF? You choose one when you buy the PC; almost no-one would have one ATI card and later change it to 2 Nvidia ones. Also, an X58 with SLI costs a lot more than a normal X58 due to Nvidia taking a cut. You won't find one for under $250.

3. The CPUs don't cost the same anymore. There's been a Phenom price cut and the X4 940 costs $230 whereas the i7 920 costs $290 (on Newegg). The i7s will not get a price cut before next year because otherwise they would cut into Core i5's market - Proof: Intel expects Core i7 marketshare to remain at 1% this year.