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I upgraded my Mac Pro with an ATI Radeon X1900 XT…they gouged me for it at $450 (its PC counterpart is around $200, up to around $300 for the best quality) but the performance increase is certainly noticeable. I have seen some bad reviews for this card, which say that it craps out during gaming. Having spent around 6 hours playing World of Warcraft with the card, I think they’re crazy. It functions very well. When looking at the smoke of the fire in Orgrimmar or the visible disease emanating around the undead, my 7300 GT fizzled, but my X1900 XT keeps up even with raised visual settings.

On the other hand, I certainly enjoy and appreciate the added performance, but was it enough to justify $450? That’s a lot of money. It could buy a second monitor…although without a better video card, that would actually decrease performance…It could buy a fabulous set of speakers, although I’m very, very happy with my JBL Creature Speakers at the moment. It could pay for my soon-to-come RAM upgrade, but that’s not a huge investment. It could almost buy an iPhone! Now that’s where I’d like to put my money. I haven’t used the card enough yet to decide if I regret this purchase, but at the moment I’m considering requesting a refund. This is something I hate to do, because the people at the Apple Store are incredibly kind and helpful. Nevertheless, they will be paid either way I’m sure. I will play a few more days and consider.

I just called Apple and their terms involve a 10% restocking fee. Seems more than fair to me. I took the hardware, I used it, and now it’s used, it would probably go on eBay for about 40% less or more. This is something I will consider. I can sell my iPod to get an iPhone, but since I also use my iPod as an external drive, that would require I purchase an external hard drive as well. The money has to come from somewhere, and I’m opposed to saving up for months at this point

Any advice would be muchly appreciated, and I shall be pondering whilst I play World of Warcraft.