I had another thought. You can get a off-the-shelf cheap computer for somewhere in the neighborhood of $400. (even a bit less with a company like emachines) that has a full Win 7 liscence, a decent (usually 250GB nowdays) hard drive and 2-4 GBs of memory. These computers have a motherboard based graphics card and an PCIx slot to add in your own.
When picking out a card for a system like this, the biggest thing to keep track of is keeping the card requirements within the (stock) power supply's capabilities. The key thing I look for is a videocard that don't need any extra power cables--they usually have reccomended power supplies of 350-400W. When I looked about a year ago, most of these systems shipped with 350W power supplies, but that may have inched up since.
I haven't found a more price effective way to go, especially considering the Windows liscence. You could buy the cheap computer and video card at best buy and pay them to install it I suppose, but that would be less of a bargain.
When picking out a card for a system like this, the biggest thing to keep track of is keeping the card requirements within the (stock) power supply's capabilities. The key thing I look for is a videocard that don't need any extra power cables--they usually have reccomended power supplies of 350-400W. When I looked about a year ago, most of these systems shipped with 350W power supplies, but that may have inched up since.
I haven't found a more price effective way to go, especially considering the Windows liscence. You could buy the cheap computer and video card at best buy and pay them to install it I suppose, but that would be less of a bargain.