[wareagle]

the most important thing to look for is a good video card and decent porcessor. The processor should be at least a 2.8ghz, with at least 512MB ram, and the video card should be at least NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT or higher, unless you want to upgrade in a few months. The higher the video card the better. You can check out tomshardware.com and see a thorough comparison of all the video cards speed with various games. Your kid is going to want the latest games at the highest resolutions and the games are only getting more demanding on the systems. Future proof a little and make sure the system has PCI express for the video card or you will be stuck with an obsolete gaming system in about a year that you can't upgrade. If he wants to play the newest games and you want to future proof as much as you can get a geforce 6800 or higher or a radeon x800 or higher. You will save alot of time and money if get a little slower processor and a lot better video card b/c that is what really pushes the graphics. I may get some stuff for saying that from so called computer experts but take it from a gamer and someone who builds and fixes computers and graduated from college with an MIS degree (like that really matters it's all about experience).