A good gaming pc or xbox 360

mainboard dp 45 sg,
quad core 2.33ghz,ati 4870ddr5 1gb,2gb of ddr3 1333mhz ram,a good enough psu,320gb hdd,19inch samsung lcd and other stuffs ...now,would this be as good as a xbox360?...or should i buy a xbox!
my purpose for pc is mainly gaming but also for 3d studio max....
but then again i can also buy a mid range pc and a xbox360 with my bucks...so...what should i do now ?...and oh...all the xboxes are modded here. i also heard that xbox360s get much red rings.
thanks in advance!!

PC ultimately will be the better games machine in terms of visuals etc, but as is always the problem.. new games means higher pc specs required and hence more money.

Consoles on the other hand only ever realy require the occassional software update. Xbox 360 does seem to have over heating issues leading to the red ring of death - why MS cant build newer ones with better HSF's is beyond me.

People always say that PC's require near constant upgrades in order to play the latest games. Okay the average life cycle of a component in a PC is low compared to that of a console. But the upgrades required cost half as much as a full console, and you can get free games through the usual channels, and arguably better games. Multiplayer on PC is far superiour to any console.

The rig you have specified is immediatly flawed and you havnt really gone into enough detail. But it looks fine apart from the RAM. these days 4GiB of RAM is a requirement, 2 simply isnt enough anymore.

You dont need to go for the highest end components to play games on your PC, i have:

Intel E7200 CPU
Nvidia 9800GT GPU
4GiB of DDR2 800 RAM

hardly a hardcore gamers PC, but this seriously does the trick, I played through the latest Wolfenstein on highest graphics at my monitors native resoloution (1680x1050), i play CoD4 Mp on Highest graphics at 125FPS, and kick ass. WoW, Bioshock is not a problem. Only game i dont run on highest is Crysis, but thats a crap game, so dont worry about it.

My PC cost me about 300 quid a year ago, Unfortunatly next time i upgrade i will have to go for the whole kaboodle, which will cost me alot, as the DDR2 and motherboard will not be compatible with the latest processors by this time next year. But even then mid to budget end components shouldnt be too bad, and i wont need to buy a new DVD/PSU/HDD/case so you can save money by doing self build PC's.

Sometimes you have to have a console though. Its nice to be able to sit back on the sofa and play a game, unlike on PC where you have to be sat up to your keyboard all day .
the Wii can be pretty fun. Okay its not a hardcore console by any stretch of the imagination, but there are some real good games there once you look past all the stuff your mother would like. Mario Kart, Super Paper Mario, Super Mario Galaxy and the latest Zelda are all great fun, then there is your Metroids..

You need to have a PC for your Multiplayer though!!