Myself I got AMD Athlon 2000+, 1GB DDRam 2100 and WinXP Home. To save money I bought a basic 3d card and I didn't buy soundcard or DVD. XP Home is haunted with problems so use XP Pro if you got the money. The latest processors are always far to expensive compared with what they can do. Lots of memory helps, especially when you save and load scenes, and when you delete objects in your scenes. Dual processors could be the thing, if you can live with all the fan noise. When you buy graphic card, there are differences between 3d gamecards and good "2d" cards.