[NickyC]

Stay away from the Alienware and all that overpriced nonsense, I build rigs far superior to what they have for much less money.

Honestly, your budget is pretty low for a really good gaming PC, but it can still be done I guess. For the processor I'd just start out with an i7 920. I think you can find them on Ebay or whatever for like $50. You can overclock them to 4.2ghz with little effort (spend the money on a good cooler. I liquid cool everything, but your budget won't permit this), and they are all you need for the gaming titles of today. Don't go spending $250 on a CPU, it's just not worth it with your limited budget. The video card is the most important part, just get a GTX 970. I think they can be had for around $320 or so now on Amazon. For the last $600 of your budget, you should be able to get a decent case, mobo, RAM, and perhaps an SSD (though it will be low capacity).