Well, I might be using this computer for computer simulations/number crunching also, so I am looking for a pretty good processor. As for the gaming, I've seen the benchmarks and reviews on the GT 240 and I'm comfortable with its capabilities and limitations.
Have you considered an AMD system based around a 1055T or anything else from that family? If you need more processing power then the 6 cores are superior to the i5/i7 processors of the same tier but obviously for gaming the i's have it in most cases(based on stock speeds). It also overclocks just as well as it's parent 1090T up to 4ghz.
Could just buy something like their kit here for something in the 600's. The combo isn't really even saving that much just 70 dollars. And I suppose if you really want to play games you could buy a dedicated GPU instead of the onboard 4200...which is low class. All in all though it has similar performance to a i7-920.
Then again, I wonder how long it will be till the sandy bridge (intel) and bulldozer(amd) cpus come out.
Edit: oh their supposed release date is in 2010 Q4 if you want to hold your breath that long
Edit: P.S. ATI will be coming out with their Southern Island chips 6000 series in October-November and they announced there would be price cuts to the 5000 series.
Edit again: There are quite a lot of deals like the 5770 being on sale for 90-100 dollars on newegg on the occasion. I saw it twice but that was after I bought a GTX 460.
Edited by Faval, 13 August 2010 - 12:53 PM.