Are you able to salvage anything from your old PC? Not having to buy a power supply, a DVD drive, an operating system, a case, etc can go a long way towards helping out the process. Those costs add up very fast.
There are a lot of different flavors of 7900GS cards out there which will result in very different performances. That said, below is an Anandtech review of the performance with stuff cranked up. The basic answer is: a 7900GS will run the game on max settings, but you'll dip below 30FPS.
Also, regarding waiting for prices to drop, no. I wouldn't anyway. Buy what you need right now and don't get caught up in always waiting for the next thing. There's always a cheaper, better option around the corner. However, we keep hearing rumors that there will be sub-$200 Series 8 cards released in late March. Those could be worth waiting for if you're concerned with DX10, but the performance vs. a 7900 would likely be on par.
Always go with the faster video card. SLi is a bit of a joke, imo, meant mainly for people with a lot of disposable income who are unhappy with just having the fastest single card on the market.
I've been giving your situation some thought and here's what would probably work best for you. Buy a new video card. Don't buy anything else yet, just the new video card. I'd suggest a 7900GT like this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150216 Buy it locally from a Best Buy or Circuit City or somesuch. It's very easy to install (you just pull out the old video card, plug in the new one, and connect the power supply to it). You'll have to update your video drivers for it, but honestly that's as easy as installing any sort of software. Nvidia's webpage will have directions to walk you through it. The basic process comes down to removing your current video drivers (from the add/remove programs utility), rebooting, clicking an .exe file, and rebooting again. Very simple. Buying just the video card at this point has a lot of potential benefits for you. It's the easiest thing you can do for the biggest performance gain, it's modular so one way or another you're going to be buying it anyway, and considering how uncomfortable you are with installing components it's the least complicated thing you'd need to do. There is a chance that your power supply won't run the video card. However most times they overestimate the required power supply suggestions based on the assumption that you're running quite a few things in your PC. Chances are your system will run the card fine, and let's say worst case scenario it can't. Nothing will be damaged. Return the card and be done with it, or keep the card and buy a new PSU. A PSU is also modular (hell everything is, but these are some of the easiest things to install) so in the end, you're never going to be wasting any money as these are things you'd be buying one way or another, and they're all returnable.
Consider doing this before anything bigger like buying a whole new PC or upgrading the guts out of your current one. The 7900GT would serve you well with Company of Heroes and Battlefield. And it's the fastest, easiest, cheapest, most expandable way to start enjoying those games right now.
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