I'm in a similar boat as you fearon. My graduation present (yeah its early) from my grandparents is $1200 for a computer. Thus far this is what I have in mind.
Athlon 64 3800+ newcastle
MSI K8N Neo board
1GB Corsair TwinX RAM
XFX GF 7800GT
Maxtor 200gig SATA 16mb cache HDD
That with the other minor things (antec case, nice PSU, fans) comes to a little over a grand.
*excited!!!*
