Been out of the PC Hardware game for a while, someone help please =)

[Malfunction]

The last time I read up on any GPUs and CPUs, NVIDIA's 8 series was kicking ass, and Intel was just putting out their quad-cores, with the Q6600 being the best bang for your buck. Now when I go look at both of these categories, there are so many new products, I just feel overwhelmed.

Can someone point me towards easy-to-read benchmarks for some of this new hardware? I'm almost afraid to google search such a thing, fearing just how many different hits I'll have to wade through to find anything decent.

 

[Alan00000]

Just check Tomshardware.com i think thell have waht your looking for.

 

[Quixoticism]

The 8 series are still pretty good as nVidia has re-released the 8800 a couple times as the 9800GT and the 250. Ati has the HD4850 and 4870 which are very good for the price and nVidia has the 260 and 280 which are top end ATM.

Intel has the Core i7 which is pretty fast, if your going budget the Q6600 or core2duo 8#00 will still give great performance.

Prices for parts are cheap these days so you can get a really good system for not so much.

 

[Lizardizzle]

just check Newegg.com out. I found a 9800GT for less then $150.

 

[Asus]

For CPUs they have chips like the Q6600 but a bit faster and lower power. Same socket and everything. Like the Q9550.
But they also released their Core i7 chips which are a bit faster yet. Have to pay a price premium for these.
benchmarks

ddr2 is still the best bang for your buck instead of ddr3.

For GPUs the 8800 and 9800 series isn't much different. Even though they are 'old' they can still handle new games fine as long as you don't have a large LCD. The GTX 260 is a great alternative if you want more performance or have a bigger screen. Rebates bring em down to $160 on newegg.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/16681/6

(9800 GTX is the lowest card shown on this chart. 9800gt (basically a 8800gt renamed) is a bit slower. Chart here for comparison.)