Im building a computer too with the same budget in mind. Im getting an AMD FX-8350 8 cores, 660 Ti gfx, 16go of ram, and a wicked amd motherboard for this price, oh and don't forget a good psu too. On newegg, it's 950$ with taxes, not bad at all id say. Note that this is without the case or windows, since i already have those.

If you're not planning on gaming a lot and doing lots of render, id say amd is the way to go. Hell even for gaming it's still a very decent chip. Games are more gpu bound those days anyway. Or go with a 3770 or 3570 intel cpu if you prefer a little more speed by core.

And if you dont have a good monitor, id suggest getting one, just got my 32'' lcd yesterday to replace my old crt 19'' LOL, it's crazy.

After reading all of these replies I'd have to say that I'm probably going to wait and save up a little more $. It took me a while to get the first grand but it will be worth the wait to get a little more so I don't have to skimp on the GPU. I wasn't sure what card to get at first but I am glad you all recommended the 660, I looked it up and for what it offers it has a reasonable price. Also the SSD is a great Idea as well. I can't wait to put this thing together! I have a lot to learn that is for sure, that is what you all showed me, but I am glad. I have been attending a university and I am majoring in computer programming so right now that is my strongest skill. I know only know C and some Java and I am currently working on UnrealScript in the UDK 3 engine. Very similar to Java so it's coming along smoothly. I just finished my first year and I am actually going to transfer to Full Sail and take up there Game Development program. My goal in the long run is to build a professional looking game. I couldn't possibly build a professional looking game by myself especially since I am still an amateur, but If learn enough as I go I can build a high quality level with good game play. That is my goal and I am determined to do it. The only thing I lack in is 3D design. I am familiar with the workings of the Unreal Engine and coding isn't a problem for me, but learning how to make decent 3d models will be a challenge. I am investing in a new machine to do it though. Thanks for all of your suggestions, it helped big time!

I would like to point out that new GPU's/CPU's (really every component) comes out ALL the time, by the time you have more money the best options may have changed. This happens almost every year. I heard somewhere that the nvidia 700 series will be out later this year. What usually happens is that parts come out at a inital higher price to their relative counterparts (i.e. GTX 770 -> GTX 670), but slowly decrease in prices, until the next series (GTX 870 -> GTX 770), same with everything else.

I would recommend AMD GPU. They have pile of stream processors, and mainly fast memory, it makes the rasterizer very powerfull. You do not need to buy extra expensive one, just buy bit higher middleclass and save money for potential crossfire pair. If you develop 3d aplications, I would buy extra NVIDIA cheap card so that you solve out NVIDIA/ATI incosistencies. You will need solid powersupply. As for CPU, if you develop 3d models, I gess you have got multiple software running, so then you need a lot of RAM and maybe more than 2 cores. I would buy 3 RAM sticks and a triple-channel MB. If you choose CPU, be mainly conserned on the size of cache, and the ram frequency maximums, so the 1666MHz RAMs will not be in vain. If I would have 1K dolars, I would set theese priorities.

GPU-AMD- 5000 MHz RAM UP, 1900 processors UP, 256 bit , 2GB at least

MB - triple channel , 1666 MHz RAM frq, i5 family CPU gaining theese parameters, 2 times PCI 16x 2.0 slot

CPU - i5 core over 3.5 GHz, 4 cores, large L3 cash, fast BUS

RAM - three 4GB sticks, 1666 MHz, DDR3

Power - some solid brand , 600 W

HDD- 64mb cache, SATA 2

If I had money left, I would play with water cooling. But this is stupid idea

Johnny, you don't buy a triple channel mainboard to put an i5 on it. It's dual-channel only!

After reading all of these replies I'd have to say that I'm probably going to wait and save up a little more $.

Might I suggest to save a lot of money, buying low-end and upgrade often instead of spending everything in a single blow?

Also, for programming purposes, you can cut a lot, a lot of corners.

I would buy 3 RAM sticks and a triple-channel MB

Why on Earth would she buy an LGA 1333 motherboard in order to have *jazz hands* triple channel memory? Triple channel is practically worthless for everything.

If you choose CPU, be mainly conserned on the size of cache, and the ram frequency maximums

Uh-huh... Ram speeds are basically meaningless. The 1600 cap on stock Ivy is just fine. Even the 1333 stock speeds on Sandy Bridge is just fine.

save money for potential crossfire pair.

Crossfire only makes sense if you're incapable of gaining that much power from a single card, such as Crossfiring 7950s. Crossfire is a gigantic pain. SLI is a pain too, but between the two SLI is vastly superior.

In half of our tested games, the pair of Radeon HD 7970s in CrossFire showed no appreciable measured or observed increase in performance compared to a single HD 7970. I cannot overstate that point more precisely: our results showed that in Battlefield 3, Crysis 3 and Sleeping Dogs, adding in another $400+ Radeon HD 7970 did nothing to improve your gaming experience, and in some cases made it worse by introducing frame time variances that lead to stutter.

Blade, could you reason up why triple channel is not a solid step feature in oppose to dual one? I would be curious to know, totaly no offence!

my reasoning is:

if you exhoust RAM, what happens on 3d development PCs, those days bottle necks are RAM operations,(read,write) not CPU, so if you have raster editor opened with 12 10MBpix images, 3ds max open..... you will run out of 8GB just like that! Frequency matters, but I favor 1333MHz RAM over 1666 ones too, for I cannot add up 200 dolars for CPU that will utilize them at that rate, but I believe this is common on those days budget Intel CPUs.

, but you are right that socket 1156 is maybe not supporting triple channel, but I think that i7 came on 1156 socket too, I would stress to OP she should investigate very well on what she is buying and discuss it, in a manner that it will not "just run" but will "use all the features not downgraded"

About RAM speeds, I have profiled them, and I found out that 1066Mhz compared to 1333MHz are 1066/1333 slower. I had a cycle that was just coppying bytes (read-write operation), and the ratio was just like that. And programs are mainly just writing to memory and reading from it, they perform logic and algebraic assembly operations in an amount, that is rather much lesser.

In general yes, faster RAM is better, and triple channel is better than dual channel, but as pointed out, the processor and the motherboard have to support it. On the other hand, if I were buying a new computer today, I would likely go for a quad-channel setup.

Ram speeds are basically meaningless.

Games like Crysis 2 have been developed on engines that have been optimized for almost-decade-old game consoles, where memory speeds are very slow. As a result, they'll be designed in such a way that will tolerate slow memory, which means they're not a very good benchmark for testing fast memory.

They'd be better off testing something like Minecraft written in Java, which likely has horribly non-optimal memory access patterns