I'm looking to upgrade my Solidworks machine but am looking form advice on what graphics card, amount of RAM and what type of processor I should be looking at.  We run Solidworks 2012 and do rather large assemblies. Sometimes these assemblies can be 2000-3000 pieces.  My machine now was built in 2010 it is 12 GB, NVIDIA Quadro FX1800 768MB video, Win7 64, Intel I7-980x Extreme Processor. Should I be looking at Quad or Dual core?

The problem I am having is the when I get into these large assemblies I am spending a good 20-25 minutes per hour watching the little cherrio spin as the model save or regenerates

Looking for ideas