It depends on what kind of games you want to run. A budget gaming rig for ~$500 I built this past spring with a 780g mobo, X2 5000+BE (stock speeds), 2GB ram, and 9600gt ran Bioshock at 1080P with all settings maxxed out and rarely dropped off from the 60fps cap. GRID and Crysis needed to turn some eye candy down to run well at 1080P, but a $500 system (including cheap case and PSU) today should be able to handle those same games without issue.. well, ok, maybe not Crysis, but it's a horribly coded game.
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