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IF YOU'VE BEEN RESISTING scratching the early adopter's itch since the launch of Intel's new Core 2 Duo processors, now could be a good time to indulge yourself. Core 2 Duo chips have shed their initial price premiums, Intel P965 motherboards have had a little bit more time to prove themselves, and a trio of very appealing graphics cards has materialized in the $199-299 price segment. Of course, DDR2 memory prices have also increased substantially due to the back-to-school rush and the looming holiday season, but your dollar still buys better overall performance today than it did a couple of months ago.

Some might be tempted to hold off upgrades due to the imminent arrival of products like Intel's quad-core "Kentsfield" CPU and next-gen graphics processors from Nvidia and ATI. However, such products tend to debut as high-end parts too expensive for the majority of users. Kentsfield, for instance, will arrive under the very same Core 2 Extreme brand that currently houses the company's $999 top-of-the-line chip. Unless you intend to have a couple of grand to blow on the latest and greatest parts in the next few weeks, your needs should be quite well met by this latest iteration of our system guide.

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