Wicked_Witch is Kat.
I was feeling sorry for her, so I aimed a "work" SMP machine at her. I turned it back off.
The current Bang/Buck setup is 2 nVidia GTS450 or GTX460's. These are good for 17k-26k PPD a pair. A SLI pair of GTX460's with the 1GB GDDR5 (Galaxy Kit) is about $330 at TigerDirect right now.
The i7-950 is a great chip at a good price, this is what I put in "tom's" machine, and I like it. But with the 1090T selling for $229 now, the 950 almost twice as much money by the time you dress it out now. A 1090T can make about 10k PPD when overclocked 10%.
The Stupid Excessive ePenis Setup is dual Xeons running BigAdv. Some folk have gotten over 160k PPD with a pair of Xeons overclocked with water-cooling. There in NOTHING a normal computer user does with a desktop that needs that kind of power. They are for professional video editing, animation rendering, and movie special effects. Not even Catia ($$$ CAD system) needs dual Xeons.
It's a budget thing.
In the case of the 460's, if you want to use them for gaming in SLI, they are extremely potent. IIRC, a pair of 460's will keep up with the best single cards costing twice as much.
My "suggested" HiPo Gaming, video editing, and F@H setup:
AMD 1090T overclocked to 3.6ghz (about $230)
Dual PCIe 16x slot motherboard (about $130)
2x GTX460's (about $350)
DVD burner ($16)
60GB SSD ($100) for the Operating System only
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211479
1TB 7200rpm HDD ($60)
4GB (2x2) of DDR3-1600 RAM ($50)
Win7-64 Pro ($140 OEM)
750w powersupply ($100)
Good case ($80)
This will generate about 25-30K PPD, and play all games on Extreme settings, as well as rip through any other home software.
but I can't giftwrap or reconfigure computers while they are running. I suppose it would look really suspicious to see a cord coming from a box under the tree, and it's humming...