................................CONGRATULATIONS RT ON REACHING 205,000,000 MOT POINTS !!!................................

.............................CONGRATULATIONS PohSoon ON REACHING 10,000,000 MOT POINTS !!!.............................

Dr. Mike While the processor you choose is but one part of the puzzle, it is the most important single part. A good place to compare Intel Processors is here You can select from among the pocessors and do a side-by-side comparison. If the comparison was solely on processors at those prices, then the 2700K would give you the most bang for the buck but the 3820 would likely accomplish more given that the money is not the determining factor. Just a side note, the AlienWare is likely to have better components than most brands. (Just an opinion).

If it's not confusing enough here's more food for thought. WCG will be coming out with a GPU app for HCC. What that means is that you'll be able to run HCC tasks on your GPU, which is much faster(15x or more) than doing them on your CPU. If you're looking for a new computer the graphics card should be part of the equation. Hey, it's only money.

Just in case you didn't know, Alienware is made by Dell.

Mike, did some checking online and it looks like you have a choice among Best Buy, Office Depot, Micro Center and local shops for computers there (it's amazing what you can learn from Google and Google Maps). We have all three chains here in Atlanta and, in your shoes, I'd go with the Alienware at Micro Center. You could try calling online places like Frys, Newegg and Tiger Direct to see if they can handle the sales tax holiday on an order. That might give you more options. Generally though, I've found that, over the years, computers tend to fall into the under 1000 dollars, 1200-2000 and over 2400. The first is the cheap, slow stuff. The second range will get you a good machine with decent preloads. The last is the high end stuff targeting specific niches (in laptops, it will get you an ultralight, long-life battery, super fast machine). Since you're dead in the waters for now, I'd get the Alienware machine as it should be at least a quad CPU, probably with hyperthreading, so you'll be able to crunch eight WUs at once. It probably will have Win7 and enough preloads to handle your needs other than some version of MS Office. This gets you a decent if not good cruncher that will meet your normal non-crunching needs. Afterwards, you can look at adding maxed-out crunching-only machines.

BTW, the sales tax holiday for clothing, school supplies and computers is next Friday and Saturday here in Georgia.

EDIT: Oh yea, RT's right, leave the GPU card issue for later. Those tend to run extra hot anyway and the only reason to add them to this desktop would be if you get into gaming. That's something you can add later on to your dedicated crunching machines.