video cards have also had a dramatically lowered price, and now event the new budget cards are pretty powerful, for example i just build a friends computer and was able to get a radeon hd2600 for $49 that isnt amazing but isnt really challange by most games except like crysis, and as for my vid cards, i spent $130 and got dual sli nvidia geforce 8500gt's and they can play crysis at full settings in just about every area except areas with complete foliage so again for a card that runs well (not perfect) its not that expensive nowadays. (btw, my cards were purchased 5 months ago now too, so its probably around the point were prices get dropped again, around every 6 months)