I spent $4500 Cdn on a 2 x dual Opteron 280 box. Asus K8N Server/Workstation mainboard, 4 Gb Registered RAM, Nvidia 7900GTX 512 Mb PCI-e, 2 x 250GB  SATA HDD,  LG DVD-RW, Win XP Pro SP2.
I have heard that the new Intel chips are faster but for the price it does everything I want , 5.5 times faster than my old machine (Cinebench test scores).
I can try things now to see how it will look and then go back and tinker. No more waiting for next morning to find out I had botched something.

Pass no temptation lightly by, for one never knows when it may pass again!