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[Idiom]

I'm building a new rig. Fewer and fewer new games are actually appealing or worthwhile for me, so I think this may be near my last one. This is a budget machine. I can play at just *gasp* 20-30 frames per second comfortably.
Being able to make one final upgrade later would be wonderful.

Firstly, the big question:
AMD or Intel?
I don't think 4 cores are really necessary, seeing as I don't encode video while watching a movie with separate music playing and playing Crysis with DF running on a 12x12 area for the hell of it while I set the rest to calculate the last digit of pi.
Intel's dual cores, or AMD's triple? Or is there a worthwhile AMD dual core?

Motherboard?
The 780G and 790GX look like a great deal for an AMD setup. What's the Intel equivalent?

Good read.
I'm not after the highest frame rate possible. 1280x1024 resolutions are fine for me (god bless poor eyesight and small monitors). The 4850 looks like a great deal, unless someone can suggest something better. Around 150$ is good, and cheaper is better. If it can go longer without needed to be replaced, even better.

EDIT:
Anyone?

[Muz]

I'd go AMD, because I'm satisfied with how it's been working on my laptop. Intel has better quality control, as always, but paying 30% more for a 2% lower chance of frying is not a statistically good bargain

Core number doesn't really matter. I think a consultant once suggested to go with the less cores for now, simply because they're cheaper and are able to perform at about the same rate. Lots of cores doesn't necessarily make the game better, there's a bit of efficiency lost there.

Get like 1 GB DDR2 and Windows XP and you should be fine for the next 2 years. If you ever need to, just buy another GB of RAM in the future. Changing the processor, motherboard, or graphics card is costlier in the long run. Windows Vista is good for DX10, new hardware, and runs faster with powerful hardware, but you don't need it yet.

I haven't really kept track of the motherboards and graphics cards out lately, so I'm not going to give any advice on those

[Idiom]

Anyone with better advice?

[Cthulhu]

Muz, you just got jacked.

Are you gonna take that?

[Earthquake Damage]

I very recently discovered Ancient Chinese Secret (TM).

Disabling weather and temperature never affected my framerate very much.  In my most recent fortress (a quick "ammo depot" for adventurers that accidentally ballooned into a full fortress, aided by a minimal pop cap, no invaders, speed:0, no_eat/drink/sleep...  the works), in an effort to maximize speed, I disabled cave-ins.  Holy SHIT!  I went from 40 (20 during high-activity periods or hauling from difficult-to-path-to locations) to 100 FPS.  Note that my FPS cap is 100, so who knows how high it might be able to go.

Disable cave-ins.  Seriously.  It makes such a huge difference.  And cave-ins are so basic in implementation right now that it makes a minimal difference anyway, unless you rely on them for traps, or self-destruct mechanisms, or some sort of highly irregular strip-mining procedure.

[Zerox]

1GB of RAM is borderline barebone, and from what I've read here, you want a medium range, which is 2-3 GBs of RAM (RAM is also really cheap) I'd also go AMD in my opinion, (This is an awesome deal, although it's a bit more gamer-oriented and can run a bit hot apparently, you'll be solid for a long time with that processor)

[Capntastic]

Pound for pound, Intel processors are better.