Yeah.... the $5000 was NOT an option, I'm not THAT much of a gamer, although blown away by it, I stink at it. It would be not advantageous to spend anything beyond going for a good machine that multi-purposes. The high end Media machines really don't offer 1gig video interestingly enough - not standardized cause not overly needed.
But going a gig video makes sense to me - since the difference from 256Meg and 528meg is night and day, doubling that is a HUGE spread to buy myself elbow room for tech growth. I do like the fast processors and the DDR3 CPU and DDR5 video ram - plus being 64 bit, seems about 5 times faster than anything I have. Worth the money for sure.
GREAT SITE LINKS - thanks, they are very helpful indeed, just specing things out and seeing what works with what!