Heh, here's my short history with different graphics cards:
Matrox G200 + Voodoo 2 16Mt (I think...)
Geforce 3 TI500
Geforce 7800GT
ATI hd 4870
I usually buy the latest and fastest GPU and then use it for about three years. Comes pretty close to 3,3 years as the first one was bought in '98. All cards have probably been well over 400€ except for the latest ATI card. The performance leap especially from voodoo2 to Geforce TI500 was quite noticeable
. As for the current card, investing 200€ more to get a 4870x2 or GTX280 didn't seem to pay off so I settled for one 4870, also being my first ati card. So at some point I might be looking at upgrading my gpu instead of doing full upgrade as I didn't invest into the latest card this time. First though I need to get a silent cooler for this one but I'm happy so far
.
*diary out*