AMD Anthlon x4 620; X3 720; 955-965

It is all based on the screen resolution you play at. The higher the resolution the more you gain from a better GPU. The probus 620 paired with a HD4890 will give you better gaming performance than a PII 965 paired with HD4830 at 1920x1080. If you on the other hand play at 1280x1024 you might be happier with the faster CPU and lesser GPU.

think you should go for the Athlon II X4 since in the near future games will be probably asking for more and may use multi threading. but then they say that some dual cores are faster then quad but some are not thinking of the future and also it is a great value for money......

i think that if u do get a kick ass Cpu might as well balance it with a kick ass Gpu but then i think Cpu must be stronger than Gpu for you might bottleneck your Gpu if u do that.... take it from my side My athlon64 3000+ aint much now a days but sure can still handle some new games

i advice you to get a good motherboard so that in case you want to upgrade to a Phenom x6 maybe later next year think you can...... but who knows that's what most people recommend and its performance wise money wise and thinking twice.... ohh and by the way The Athlon II x4 is good at multi threaded applications
like think L4d2 more zombies means more RAm and good Cpu ......