No idea about which company as I've never bought a mass produced pc. One thing to consider is upgrade frequency -- most games right now don't take advantage of multicore so if you plan on upgrading next year a quad is probably unnecessary. OTOH if you're going to be keeping this system for several years you should go with a quad as most new games will support quadcore by this time next year. More cores may also allow you to run physX in emulation. If you go Intel make sure the motheboard supports the Penryn cpus coming out late this year or you'll be stuck with no upgrade path. I'm not sure if current AMD boards will run their next gen or not.

I'm sure upcoming RPGs will be very demanding; Oblivion really raised the bar in that genre and strat games are full 3d and getting more elaborate all the time. So whatever you do don't skimp on the graphics card. The Geforce 8800GTS 320 meg is at a price/performance sweet spot right now (I have one) but it might be running short of texture memory in a year or two, so a 640 meg card is a better longterm purchase. ATI's HD2900xt is a powersucking pig, so I'd give that a pass. It scores great in canned benchmarks and not so great in real world gaming -- usually gets edged out by the 8800 which uses half the power. The lesser ATIs are pretty weak and more suited to home theatre than gaming. A GF7900GS or Radeon X1950 would be cheaper and adequate right now but in a year, you'll be regretting it.

As far as OS goes, pc gaming = windows and if you want to experience DX10 then you'll need Vista at some point.

FWIW, my new system which is sitting here in boxes while I wait for all the parts to arrive, consists of:

- Abit IP35 motherboard
- Intel Q6600 quadcore cpu
- 2gb OCZ PC6400 ram
- EVGA GF8800 GTS 320 mb

I'm going to overclock the hell out of it (newer Q6600s are averaging 3.4-3.7ghz, Prime95 stable) and anticipate it lasting at least 2-3 years without needing much besides more ram.

This Christmas I will be building my next computer, if you have a good understanding of what goes on inside your computer and can read a manual you could probably build your own its much cheaper and you can make it how you want it. here's my current plan for christmas, all items are from newegg.com.

-Sunbeam Transformer IC-TR-B Blue Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case - Retail $74.99
-ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard $139.99
-EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 640MB GDDR3 PCI Expressx16 SUPERCLOCKED HDCP Video Card $394.99
-Broadway Com Corp P4OKIA600-Blue ATX 600W Power Supply $32.99
-AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ Windsor 2.8GHz Socket AM2 Processor $149.50
-Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 Dual Channel kit $109.99
-Western Digital Raptor 150GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive $194.99
-Western Digital Caviar 500GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive $104.99
-SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R,DL DVD Burner Black SATA $32.99
-Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1 Channels PCI-e Sound Card $49.99
-KINGWIN KA-9227 90mm Ball CPU Cooler $26.99
-3 MASSCOOL 80mm Case Fans $7.77
-Rexus NMB-MAT (Panaflo) 120mm Case Fan $15.99
-SCEPTRE X20WG-1080P Black 20.1" 5ms(GTG) DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor $179.99
GRAND TOTAL $1516.16

I also didn't included an OS cause I haven't decided what i'm going to install yet, so tack on $100 for XP or $200 for Vista.
but to have this system built for you would easily cost $3500+

Actually, two things in favor of Dell:
(I buy Dell laptops and monitors, and tend to mess with their configurator a lot)

1) They don't go "we've got a live one" nuts with add-on prices when you do basic component upgrades that are within the choices on their web site configurator. You can go up to a faster proc or graphics card for a reasonable premium, partly because they are every component producers biggest customer and they buy their option components in bulk.

2) They consistently have some of the best limited time special offers and unadvertised web coupons. Example: I just bought a laptop configuration that would have been nominally list priced at $1600+ for $1094 plus tax, due to current limited specials for memory and HD upgrades, and a $300-off web coupon.

Best practice seems to be to start with the most basic system they offer which is your general form factor (example: Inspiron desktops), then configure it upwards to something acceptable to you, then take it to their shopping cart and apply any coupons you've found that apply (try SuperCoupon.com, but there are many other sites), then compare your final features and price to any full system special they are offering. Don't bother taking a special offer full system, even customized, through the coupon application step - they are very good at making sure their best coupons Don't stack with their best special offers.

Oh. One other thing. Don't bother with Dell's "gaming" line; those prices really are high. You can configure close to the same, for the kind of games you/I like, by giving one of their 'normal' systems higher end options for proc and graphics.

And ignore all the sections of the configurator that offer extended warranty plans, insurance, software packages, accessories, installation, instruction, etc. THAT is actually where Dell gets its highest profit margins from the web site, after sucking you in with the coupons and special offers.

drrider

It really depends on what you want to do with the computer, other than games, and how many threads those applications support. Think of a thread as a Core. I went with an Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2X 1MB L2 cache processor, for the reason that I already had a motherboard for socket AM2.

Had I not had a motherboard in stock, I would have gone with a Core2Quad. My thing is 3D Computer Generated Imagery (CGI). This requires a massive amount of number crunching, and the apps I use support 2 or more threads (cores). Anything to cut rendertimes down.

Things to consider:

How long do you expect to be using the computer?
Structure your computer for the application that requires the most computing power.
Get the best you can afford, within your budget.