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Ask a hard core, carpal tunnel-having PC gamer and they'll tell you that real machines start at $2g and only go up from there. But the rest of us don't necessarily need that kind of processing power. Hell, the only PC game I still play is Warcraft III. Dell's new XPS rig has lots of number-crunching power coming from a Core 2 Quad Q6600 and dual NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB graphics boards. In non-nerd terms: It smokes. Of course, hard core gaming dudes will judge you incessantly for not building your own, but if you can get in on that price point, you're getting a good deal. I do kind of wish that every "gaming" machine didn't have to have silly lights all over it. I would rather they just knock 20 bucks off of the price and let me set up my own rave lazer show in my apartment.