Expensive Video Cards

I have been researching and searching for a new video card so that I can play Rise of Legends. The best video cards cost over $500 each while not quite good enough cards cost $100. Additionally, top video cards are power hungry and require power boxes with more juice. A power box alone can cost almost $100. $500 for a top video card and $100 for a power box. It will cost at least $600 just to play the newest PC games at the highest setting! This is just crazy.

An article by Techarray writes, "most enthusiasts find the $300 range to be a good balance between price and performance." So it will cost at least $300 for a decent video card to play the latest games for PCs. This makes me wonder if getting a $300 video card is even worth it. A XBox 360 costs around $400. It seems to me that it makes more sense to purchase a XBox 360 than upgrading my video card. Well, I won't be able to play Rise of Legends on a XBox 360. But I definitely will be able to play a ton of other great games on the 360 without the fuss of downloading drivers nor tweaking system settings to get the best frame rate and details.

My current graphics card, an ATI X300, performs well for everything I need except for gaming. And it will be really tough for me to justify spending $300 for a new video card just to play a few games on the PC. Is PC gaming really worth $300 or even $500 video cards when game consoles offer so much? Well, I am definitely leaning more and more towards sticking with game consoles. If I find the urge to play some RTS games, I guess I will just stick with older PC games. At least the new Civ 4 works great with my current X300 video card. I think that more PC game developers should create new games that will actually run well on most PCs without forcing gamers to upgrade hardware.