New gaming rig in Thailand max $800

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: wednesday 18th may

BUDGET RANGE: 27000 baht (+- usd $800)

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: gaming, movies, internet

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, OS

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: http://jedicool.com/pricelist.php
http://busitek.com/forms/pricelist.html

PARTS PREFERENCES: intel + ati...but flexible

OVERCLOCKING: No

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1360x768 and 1680x1050

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: want this pc to last a few years...as you can see i am quite restricted to the stuff found on the abovementioned websites.

so far i've been thinking of these parts : c2d e8400, asus p5q pro, ocz 4gb titanium, western digital 640gb green, coolermaster centurion 5, his iceq4 4850...

thanks in advance to anyone giving their input

I had to make this choice last week, and I went with the AMD Phenom IIx3. The e8400 will win some benchmarks in games, but the PII 720 isn't very far behind in those, and wins in others. Since the PII 720 has 3 cores, it will perform generally better when running multiple applications and processes outside of pure gaming. I went with the PII 720 for that reason; the e8400 might be slightly ahead right now but its a deadend cpu. Either way you go you probably won't notice a substantial difference.

The 4850 is a great choice for GPU. Do you plan on running xfire in the future? If so make sure your mobo supports xfire so you can add a 2nd 4850 in the future.