Just upgraded last month from an Nvidia 6600 to an Asus 7600gt. The difference is huge. In Japan the card retails for about US$260. I'm not one to ever go for a high end upgrade, and as far as the mid range goes, this card has definitely accelerated my machine's performance. I've gotten about a 10% OC and it runs really well. This card is along with a 3.2Ghz P4 and 1Gb ram. For those not looking to break the bank on a video card upgrade, I've been very pleased with this card. It supports higher resolutions pretty well, and I've got it hooked up to a 37" Sharp Aquos HDTV via DVI with support for 1080p. Looks very good...puts a bit of a load on the card versus a 1280x1024 resolution on my 17" LCD, but performs well. I can turn up pretty much all the settings on newer games without any lag, and it does pretty well with displaying HDTV files. Great card for under 300 bucks.

The price sounds pretty outrageous when compared with what we've paid for consoles in the past, but as far as Sony's die hard fan base goes, there are a lot of folks who have been playing on Sony consoles for quite a few years now. There are plenty of people who started playing Sony gear more than ten years ago, and these people aren't 15 year olds who can't buy games on their own. These are folks who are in their 20s and 30s who have the dough and want to keep up with the newest console technology. We aren't too far off from the big switch to digital television and the next gen DVDs, whichever one wins out (Blu-Ray or HD-DVD), are going to gain wide acceptance before too long. For me, I'm going to take a gamble on Blu-Ray, and I love the Sony franchises, so at 600 bucks I'm going to be really pleased to hit some great looking new games once I plug the PS3 into my 1920x1080 panel. The movies are going to be very cool, too.