I favor the new Penryn Quad processors, as long as it is not my checkbook that is paying for it.
The ATI cards are supposed to have price decreases in the next month, which will put pressure on NVidia to lower prices ...
I also think that a new installer for SMP for Windows will be out by then.
A single quad core system with a fast GPU should be able to run SMP and a GPU kernel and get 7,000 ppd.
At least in theory.
That's a theory I just might have to put to the test.