I see. So what makes a good gaming PC? Let's say I'm looking to put a flight simulator on it for the kids. I'm more a console guy so I don't know much about PC gaming.
Depending on which flight simulator you choose, almost any machine will run it. M$ "Flight Simulator 2004" has very low hardware requirements. It will run successfully on integrated graphics. The new M$ issue, "Flight Simulator X" doesn't seem to want to run on even very powerful PCs. (Everybody seems to complain about low frame rates. I don't think the game requires high frame rates as would a FPS, but what do i know). Amazon still has FS 2004;
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Fli..._1_1?s=software&ie=UTF8&qid=1289598208&sr=1-1
As far as, (Dell 490), "it'll hold 32 GBs of RAM", so what? That's overkill, bordering on ostentatious, for any non-enterprise use I can think of off hand. Besides, I think that running that machine under a 32 bit OS, while attempting to access more that 4GBs of RAM, would require the implementation of PAE, which is pretty slow. I believe that PAE was used in servers at one time, to access more than 4GBs of RAM with a 32 bit OS. Don't know if a work station has it though.
I don't know how many RAM sockets that board has, but if it's only 4, this (or something similar) would be the path to 32GBs:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...06074&IsNodeId=1&Description=ECC RAM&name=8GB Ah, ECC RAM, 8GB DIMMs, still a mere $250.00 bucks a pop. Meh, that's actually cheaper than I thought.