Need Help Building a PC for graphics

[madportagee]

First off I'm a graphic designer and like most jumping into freelance in my spare time. I use the CS3 suite 90% of the time and It would be great to get a mac, which i use at work. Except 2 huge problems, macs are expensive as hell and I do enjoy gaming.

My budget is $1100-1300 counting monitor. I do have a 250gb hd and speakers already. I do need a new keyboard and possibly a mouse. I do have a gift card to the apple store so those might be covered from there.

Browsing around on the forums it looks like you can get 4gb of ram for around $100, but that is really my only preference. I'm thinking quad processor would help my graphics software, if its supported, but any help would be greatly appreciated. Links too as I will be buying the computer in the next week.

Thanks again.

 

[dragonsho]

Well, I don't think that many programs utilize quad cores yet (although, I'm sure you could get one and it wouldn't hurt). I would recommend the q6600 for a quad core since that seems the most popular and alot of people have it. I have the e6850 (which is dual core) and it's been amazing for gaming. Just be sure to go intel.

For graphics card, you want the 8800gt 512mb. Around $250 and pretty much equivalent to the 8800GTX.

I have this ram and it's been great. I found lots of recommendations for this ram. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145034 Also, you can get 4gbs for $74 after MIR.