Spent about $300 to $400 on each computer (except for mine which acts as a server also) and can run most games on 1680 X 1050 on high settings. Really, what games is out that you need anything more than what I stated. GTA4 and Crysis are about it. L4D, CoD World at War, Fallout 3, all work fine.
Ohh let me guess you have the super duper graphics card, the uber CPU, and more all of which will be out of date come October. Well Grats. I don't get that option.
In October I'll upgrade to the AM 3 CPUs and the new Dx 11 Graphics and call it good. No sense in spending hundreds of dollars on a card I'm going to throw away in a year and that's how I saw it.
You may have the luxery of spending a couple grand on your one computer but I don't. I have two boys (one who is 15), a wife, a girl, and myself to keep happy. I run a 5 computer LAN setup at my home and it gets real expensive to keep them upgraded to be able to play the latest games. Yeah, my electric bill is $300 a month and I don't need to run the Heater in the Winter but we don't have TV's either.
I didn't say that the above was my computer it's my sons. The best computer is mine but it's getting a little long in the tooth too but I'll wait till October to do the upgrades.
Here is how I rate my computer priorities:
Power Supply
Keyboard and Mouse
Motherboard
GPU
CPU
All the Cases are Modifications. I put a minifridge in mine to keep my drinks cool. My wifes computer is a Carver Mod (It's built from an old Carver AMP). My little boys is a Lego Mod. My girls is Steam Punk \ Gothic. My older boys is some slim type dragon one he did himself.
I've had bad Power Supplies and I know what a bad Power Supply can do to a system and the nearby cat. I don't care for the smell of burnt cat fur and it took me months to get my little girl to stop crying. I'll always buy the best Power Supply I can get.
Keyboard and Mouse is the most used items of a computer thus I spend extra on them. It's about comfort.
Motherboard is the base of the system and I spend extra on it. I always go with a Motherboard I know I won't need to change out.
GPU: The Main Computer always gets the best Graphics I can buy when the new Direct X comes out. My budget is about $250.00 for the card. All the others are also upgraded to the latest API but are budgeted between $80.00 to $150.00. My son's card got fried so he got a 4830 till October.
CPU is the latest AMD. It's not that big of a deal to me. If I can buy 4 of them for a $100.00 I will. Especially when they are all Athlon 5400+.
Hard Drives are on a two year schedule, Monitors are on a four year schedule.
The reason I put up my specs is that it was the closest I had to his computer. Obviously, his is much, much better but I've been dealing with AMD since 1997. Retarded or not you don't live my life and when you make assumptions well... the above speaks for itself.
A 4870 is solid too. Sounds like you are just AMD bashing. 
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