Hmmm, im no so much in with shelf bought computers, i just buy a shell, then i get a decent mother board and buy the best stuff i can fit on that motherboard and occasionally upgrade the hardware after the entire thing is put together, it's rather easy to build a computer.

A few years ago I built a computer off of newegg.com for around 800$. Whatever you do, DONT buy a prebuilt and especially not Alienware because they are all overly priced and charge 500$ for the case/brand name.

Specs:
2.2ghz dual core (2.2ghz quad core for same price now.)
2gigs of ram (4 for same price now)
A nice mobo
2 Nvidia 8600Gts 512 virtual memory
Speakers logitek 5400x 5.1 surround
G5 mouse
Cyborg Keyboard
Apevia [Badass] case

It played crysis on Medium setting with no lag but WOULD NOT DO AA.

If I were to build a new computer, I'd want an Intel Core i7, and nVidia 300. Way out of your price range though.

Try local computer shops. The one in my town has some surprisingly good deals, and they will put it all together for you if you buy the parts from them.

Wait... I though that Nvidia droped out of the graphics chipset industry after the 295... but then again I was probably lied to.
Sometimes local shops still arent good. Try putting one together online then going into a local shop and see if they could drop their prices to match it.

Have you found anything in your budget yet?

nVidia is the top selling gaming graphics card manufacturer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia#Market-share

Ya I know but as my brother told me "I read that Nvidia droped out of the chipset market." He's normaly right about that kind of stuff but this time i'm not so sure at all.

I'll put a nice computer together on Newegg and post it here in a bit. 800-1000$ probably

If you guys can't afford Intel Core™ i7 or Intel Core™ i5, get a "dual core" instead of a "quad core" processor. Why? Because most games and applications can't make the most out of all of those cores. And because good "dual cores" are faster at single-core tasks since they usually have higher Ghz than "quad cores" while being cheaper at the same time..

For example Intel Core™2 Duo Desktop Processor E8400.

Pretty sure that the i5 is almost the same thing as the quad cores, as in the overall speed... so...

EDIT: Here's that one that I just put together really quick(ish).
https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/M...spx?ID=9874774 I hope this link will work if not I'll fix it.
You could take the price down quite a bit by downgrading the 285gtx to a 260 or 275 or the processor Or if you dont care if the case looks very good you can just get a 10$ one.
I went with DDR2 ram because DDR3 is quite a bit more $. If were ever planning on going to DDR3 then you'd have to get a different motherboard.

I use all 4 of my cores even though a lot of things only support one at a time.
I love being able to shove all the backround shit to a separate core from my games and stuff. Also, I'm often running at least 6 programs.