If you want to save money build it yourself (or have your friend do it for you). I bought a very fast 3800+ dual core AMD processor, 2 gb of Corsair RAM, motherboard, and 7900GT video card (top of the line at the time, its still very fast and will be for a long time IMO) for 900 in March 06. I reused my case, hard drive, monitor, cd drives and such. If you don't have those things to work with expect to spend more money of course. But $900 for this computer was a bargain.

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1985 CA 300D Turbo , 213K mi