Yup, buttloads of CPU and RAM don't pay off directly past a certain point. Over 8 cores, and I don't think you'll get much (because you should not be multi-tasking other big stuff while playing a game). Like Alan says, the Game won't use the extra CPU because it's timing had to be built off of a lower baseline. If it threads too much stuff, there's too much timing variance by what platform it runs on. For big batch EDI processing, I want threading, and I want lots of cores to make it go faster.
For a video game, I don't want the mass of enemies to react slower on your craptop vs. my mega-core re-purposed server.
The one point this concept deviates though is video hardware. The computations on what to draw and what to skimp on drawing (frame rate) are something game developers allow some flexibility variance by platform. They are OK with the game looking like crap on your craptop and looking great on somebody's newest nVidia video card.
Getting back to Alan's point...
One way to make your 16GB of RAM, of which only 4GB is actively used is to setup a RAMDISK and copy the game files into that and run from there. This is probably more cost effective than a big SSD, and it's something RAM can handle and many factors better speed than the SSD which has to pass its data across SATA through a PCI Express bus or two before it even gets used. CPU access to RAM is MUCH faster than that.
So...get 16GB of RAM before fretting about SSD and learn how to setup a RAMDrive.
What I'd like to see is recommendations on video cards. That's really the crucial point. Especially in comparison to what a Blackbox desktop might ship with.
