well to start with im an admitted PC noob as i have only owned 1 PC before and made a bad decision when i bought that, it was a HP 2.0Ghz celeron system with 512 MB SDRAM and a 40GB 7200 RPM HD, it burned out about 7 months ago as it didnt even have a CPU fan and i have been dieing to get another PC for awhile now (currently using an older laptop i borrowed from my brother) and i just got my UPS tracking number on my budget gaming PC and am very excited about it .. but im wondering how well it will play the "next gen" games such as HL2, Doom3 and Far Cry ... any opinions on what my limitations may be would be welcome, as well as advice on future upgrades that wont cost me an arm and a leg lol, i put the PC together prebuilt online (like i said im a PC noob and doing the build myself is still a bit intimidating) and ordered the video card seperately, all together after tax and shipping it's costing me about $800,new system specs are as follows, and again thanks in advance for any feedback
RaidMax Cobra Gaming Case Black w/420W PSU
Gigabyte GA-K8VM800M Athlon 64 MOBO
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ CPU
2x 512Mb DDR 400 PC-3200 RAM (1Gb Total)
WD 120GB 7200RPM HDD w/8MB Cache
Sony DW-D26A 16X DVD±RW Black Oem
Onboard Audio
Radeon 9600 Pro Advantage 256MB GPU
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
RaidMax Cobra Gaming Case Black w/420W PSU
Gigabyte GA-K8VM800M Athlon 64 MOBO
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ CPU
2x 512Mb DDR 400 PC-3200 RAM (1Gb Total)
WD 120GB 7200RPM HDD w/8MB Cache
Sony DW-D26A 16X DVD±RW Black Oem
Onboard Audio
Radeon 9600 Pro Advantage 256MB GPU
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition