I just want to expand on what jdavis said above:
4) Right now, you can get a Radeon 9600 Pro w/ 256 MB for $109. There's a catch, though. It's not made by ATI. Sapphire technologies is an ATI authorized manufacturer of their cards (in the same way that ASUS, ABit, Gainward, all make nVidia cards). Generally speaking, Sapphire cards are about $50 cheaper. But they perform every bit as well.
I'll second that. I just picked up this card a month ago, and I'm quite happy with it. The 256MB ram is only necessary if you have two monitors, which the card supports.
