With that price range, an e6600 is good. But if things start to get a little expensive, you can go for an e6300 which is good too. And of the any of the C2Ds beats the AM2. For the HD, 10k rpm isn't a big deal, unless you want faster load times. But that isn't worth for the price. You would probably have to get a new graphic card. You can go for a cheap graphic card to hold you, until about 2 weeks...which the G80 will release. Welcome to tech forums btw.