I work as a software engineer and let me just say that i fell in love with my employers when they purchased me an 8 gig ram Quad core beast the other month! I usually have about 5 to 8 instances of visual studio open so it is sorta neccisary, although at times i still feel as though it's a tad overkill! Whom am i to complain however?!

I recently built my own new toy, as lets face it at home thats all they are!  Here's the specs for it:

Q9450 - 2.66 Ghz Overclocked to 3.4 GHZ

4 GIG DDR2 Ram (my mobo supports DDR3, but it's too expensive at the momment.

Nvidia 8800GTX 768MB GFX Card OEM (Only £180 or $360).

Thermaltake Kandalf Aluminium Case

The whole thing cost me roughly £550, but the performance is intense. I run Windows-XP 64bit (to accomodate the 4 gig of ram). I managed to overlclock the processor by simply changing the FSB speed and upping the voltage slightly to 1.325v. I did a lot of checking on the internet to see what was achievable without getting too bogged down in settings and this seemed the most popular. The Q9450 has 12mb Cache, so even though you can't overclock it to anything silly, it will still outperform an overlcocked Q6600.

Overall the thing is highly stable, surving a 24 hour stress test and runs at a cool 35 Degrees Celcius on idle, 45 on load, and i think that is mostly down the 8800 GTX, which is a monster by the way. So if anyone is looking for amazing performance and not having to spend £600+ ($1,200+) on the processor alone, take a good look at the Q9450.

qft.

Game Devs should (and sometimes do) have top of the line systems to use. The systems really pay for themselves in the time-saved department, thinking in the long-term.

I myself, have:

Q6600 G0 - 3ghz oc - $300
8800gtx - $500
8gb ddr2 800 ram - $180
2x500gb hdds (no raid) - $100
vista 64-bit ultimate - Free
antec 900 (keeps it all cool) - $80
antec 650w psu - $60
22" Acer LCD - $180

and i'm gonna get a new rig within 6 months, consisting of:

2 x 4ghz Xenon Quad (Skull Trail)
2 x 9800gx2 [Quad SLI] (or 2x280gtx if i'm lucky)
16gb ddr3 1333
300gb VelociRaptor 1000rpm (OS install)
2 x 1tb hdds (no raid)
vista 64-bit ultimate and server 08 dual boot
thermaltake armor+ lcs
Dual 24" LCDs

*note, both of these builds are budget builds, costing less than $2000 at time of purchase (gaming rig 1 cost $1700 a year ago (after tax, and other minor things); gaming rig 2 is estimated to cost around $1800 at time of purchase)*

and if i can have all that, i'm sure game companies can afford systems like that.