If your budget will allow, a minimum of a 2gig a64 or 3gig p4, 1 gig of ram (preferably 2), and a geforce6800 or better graphics card. Monitor and harddrive capacities to taste. With 2 gigs of ram this should be able to handle all of the latest games, with 1 gig you'll have a bit of a weak spot, but ram's an easy upgrade in the future. If your budget will allow, get a dualcore chip. It won't help much now, but newer games will be able to take advantage of the doubled processing capacity.