Yes.
Don't buy a 'gaming machine'
go to Alienware website and peruse their machine specs....then go back to the Dell site (AlienWare ARE Dell) and find similar machines with almost identical specs for 200-300 less.
a fair chunk of the premium you pay for a 'gaming machine' is style...the box for example, will be a lary shape and colour, fitted with LEDS and stuff that you will almost certainly turn off after a day anyway because of the distractions they cause.
You'll also find that 'gaming machines' are usually tweaked versions of the standard desktop machines anyway.....overclocked CPUs and GPUs, maybe a pair of SLI /x-fire cards in, and 'platinum/ extreme' or some other spurious adjective added on to the description of the sound card
Ok, the speaker jacks may be gold plated, but you won't possibly notice the difference between any decent 7 channel sound card and a 'gamer edition platinum uberchilll mach8' one
Obviously, a decent GPU is important, and a twin socket Motherboard so you can upgrade to a twin card setup when the NEXT big game comes out is a good idea.
The requirements for the game aren't actually as high as I thought they would be;
<table><tbody><tr><td style="width: 20%; padding: 5px;">
OS:</td><td style="width: 80%; padding: 5px;">Windows XP / Vista / 7 (Windows 95/98/ME/2000 are unsupported)</td></tr><tr><td style="width: 20%; padding: 5px;">
Processor:</td><td style="width: 80%; padding: 5px;">Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom X38750 processor or better</td></tr><tr><td style="width: 20%; padding: 5px;">
Memory:</td><td style="width: 80%; padding: 5px;">2GB RAM</td></tr><tr><td style="width: 20%; padding: 5px;">
Video Card:</td><td style="width: 80%; padding: 5px;">NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT / ATI Radeon X1950 or better</td></tr><tr><td style="width: 20%; padding: 5px;">
Sound Card:</td><td style="width: 80%; padding: 5px;">DirectX 9.0C or later</td></tr></tbody></table>
My old Dell Vostro matches that, and plays 'Skyrim' wonderfully smoothly already.
So, no, I wouldnt get a gaming machine, I'd get a more standard machine, upgrade the parts that are important, make sure it has as much 'futureproofness' as you can in terms of Mobo type, and get a big chunk of nice fast ram as well.
If you want to get a big lary shouty style lime green box though, go for it...Alienware is a good place to start looking
