You need a PC already just for the practical uses. After building or buying a new computer, and adding a decent graphics card for $100 and even less possibly you have a machine that's a helluva lot more powerful than any console. Mouse and keyboard is superior for shooters, MMOs, RTSs of course. Real 1080p output with 2 or 4x MSAA is awesome while the consoles sometimes struggle to keep up at 720p. Customization is always better on PC games and machines too, plus you don't have to pay for an online service with the vast majority of non-MMO titles. If you're obsessed with achievements, many Steam games have them as well as many of the Games For Windows Live enabled titles like GTA4 + Episodes, Fallout 3 and others have them.

Just saw the ad on Steam a few minutes ago. I'm very interested in playing it since I heard that the game on XBLA was very good, like TF2 meets tower defense. Should be alot of fun then :D

I'd leave the PhysX off. The 9600 GSO won't have a tough time with the game BTW at a 720p like resolution.

5570 maxes around 37 GB/s. It's on a 128 bit bus with DDR3. The 5670 is the same GPU, with GDDR5 and clocked faster, but of course more expensive. The 5570 is a good card though, I used to have one.

As for console parity, I would go around $300 (not including OS), depending on what you buy and which OS you're using (2 GB of RAM is fine for an XP system, no DX10 or 11 though). That cost doesn't include a WiFi adapter either. For a decent gaming capable computer (well beyond console parity), I would put $450-500 (Athlon II x4, 4 GB DDR3, GTX 460) at least into the hardware and then of course the $100 for the OS (damn you MS!), so about $600 total.

Oh and the 360's tessellation scheme is different from the way it is employed on DX11 hardware. The ATi cards pre-DX11 with tessellators I think still would've implemented tessellation in a different form from how the 360 does if they had been used by PC developers anyways.

Visually games wouldn't get a boost at all. That is more dependent on the system running the game, unless the cart reader was fast enough to access data with the same spontaneity as RAM. Load times would be quick as hell though. There have been proponents of Flash memory cards as being the future of store purchased games, but discs are still much cheaper, don't require a power source to maintain the data on the drive, and are more resilient overall I would say. I think a better thing to think about is if the next round of consoles will use HDDs or SSD drives.

Project Reality (focus on extreme realism, probably the most popular BF2 mod there is)

Forgotten Hope 2 (World War 2 mod, personal favorite BF2 mod, I have a link in my sig for it)

AIX - Allied Intent Extended (single player and co-op mod that adds TONS of extra maps, weapons, vehicles, and native support for as many bots as your computer can handle, up to 255 I think)

This isn't a new idea. External graphics processors made to connect to laptops technically work in a similar manner. The thing is, what port would this external processor connect to on the PS3? Will it send data back into the PS3? Is this a graphics processor, or an augment to the Cell? With the crappy bandwidth of USB 2.0 or the Ethernet port, there is no point. Maybe the SATA port for the HDD could work but where would you put the HDD?

What is your current card, and what games do you play? Some reasons for DX11 to exist is DirectCompute, better threading of graphics loads, better efficiency in general, and tessellation of course. Also it works on DX10 cards by disabling those features that require DX11 hardware to run, so developers don't have to abandon gamers with DX10 graphics cards.

The smaller machines are harder to build so they tend to cost a premium, especially when you add high end components. If you're willing to bump up to $900, you could get a Dell XPS 14" with I think it's an i5-450M, 4 GB DDR3, and a Geforce GT 420M 1 GB graphics processor. I'm enticed to get rid of my Sony Vaio 13" for one, or get one of new Asus 14" N series that have the GT 425M. The Geforce 310M in my Sony doesn't really cut it for games, but I hardly play games on it though, as I got desktops for that kind of thing at home, and I'm rarely on the go. As long as I can get my Battlefield 2 on without problems on my Sony, I'm good. FEAR, BF2142, Source games all play pretty well on it.

Here is a very good deal on a 14" MSI with Geforce GT 325M 1 GB for $699.

The biggest issue I ran into was the PSU that came with my case did not match my motherboard connector wise, so I had to go out and a new PSU. Outside of that, highly enjoyable. I'd say the only thing I hate about the actual building process is trying to get all those goddamn jumper wires where you need them to be. They are so damn tiny.

The new found computing experience was a revelation though. I had been "stuck" on laptops for a year and half for computing and gaming. Going from a Turion x2 1.8 GHz, 2 GB DDR2-533, Geforce Go 7200 (same speed of performance as a 6200) laptop to an Athlon x2 5600 2.8 GHz, 2 GB DDR2-800, 8800GTS 320 MB based machine sure did open up my eyes, and from there on I wasn't a PC gaming and console person anymore, I was purely a PC gamer lol.