Mark Thomasson HydroGeo

Hello all, I am putting together a new machine and am interested in the experiences people have had with different configurations. We are trying to honor some semblance of a budget ($3k). My experience so far is that ultimate clock speed (frequency is king) matters most with a strong consideration on speed drop off as multiple cores are utilized and a strong video card for the parallel construction of matrices (i.e. cuda cores). I would also be interested in people's thoughts on best processors (anyone using AMD's new processors) and consumer grade video cards like GeForce vs Quadro cards? Any insights would be appreciated. Best, Mark