So you're saying that a slight bump in graphics is worth $530? WTH?? The one thing I've been able to figure out about pc gamers over the years is that pc hardware is like a pissing contest for these people.....your video card is 2 days old?? You suck! I get an extra 13polygons per second and it only costs me $125 a month on my CompUSA credit account, but I got a discount because I bought the thousand dollar audigy sound card...yeah I can play mp3's with a 1% better clarity and 2Mhz louder...what you got punk??!!!
It's a waste, Pc's are for work or email. If you want to game, buy a gaming machine, if you want to listen to music, get a stereo. If you want to watch dvd's buy a dvd player....pc's are nice that you can do a little bit of everything on one machine, but it costs so much to get a decent machine that it isn't worth it.
As for my computer....yes its old and slow. I have a duron 700Mhz overclocked to 920Mhz with a little over 600MB ram. I've got a 20G HDD, cd-rw, dvd-rom, audigy X-gamer 5.1 sound card.....when I built this system 2.5 years ago it cost me a little over $750. It does everything i need to and it does it smoothly. I download music....transfer it over to my xbox via cdrw and then from my xbox through optical audio cable to my Bose Lifestyle system for surround sound duties. I think I've got all the bases pretty well covered.