and in my case I do run most of my games, other than elder scrolls oblivion & one other, at 1600x1200, with 4x or 8x AA & 8x or 16x AF, if the games support it, HDR as well (some I will run at 1280x1024 to try to balance out settings at high, but slightly lower res to get decent frame rates. I do have a couple other games I haven't even installed yet, like Battlestations Midway & a couple others... which is why I'm so opposed to getting anything less that a 512MB card... my 320MB card is sort of limited at the higher resolutions I run at.
anyways, my brothers friend also got back to me, said he'd be interested in at least the video card, & possibly the CPU when the parts become available. he'll have to shell out another $50 for a mobo, $40-60 for a new PSU, & maybe another $40 for DDR2 (current system is a nforce 4 SLI mobo Socket 939 system I built for him, has like 1 or 2GB of DDR400 if I remember, & my old Venice 3000+ with the old 128MB Geforce 6600GT)... might even sell him one of the extra 80GB SATA drives I'll have.