AFAIK, there's no reason to buy DDR2, yet. Negligible speed increases. I would go for a gig (at least) of pc 3200 ram- your choices for ram can easily range from about $150-$450 depending on how much cash you want to fork out. (In answer to your question, I would want to have more AND faster ram
). Grab an AMD Athlon 64 939-pin, or an FX 939 pin. These proc's are gonna last you for a long time, hopefully. I definitely wouldn't buy Intel right now. Video is a tough call. Perhaps wait a bit until a PCIe solution comes out for AMD motherboards (I thought it should have been here by now..). Otherwise, I would buy a 6600 GT AGP. All this, plus all necessities, shouldn't put you back much more than $1000. You could easily go for a top of the line processor or a better videocard if you want to pwn your enemies better or something, but I wouldn't. Buy a lot of ice cream sandwiches.