PC upgrade time?

[TinCow]

Right after speaking to a little pc shop, they will so the following...

ATI Radroen 9950 256MB and 1GB of ram fitted for £170....(although maybe a bit less for cash...nudge nudge.)

does this sound good in both performance and price?

At today's exchange rate that is $299.38 US.

I've never heard of a Radeon 9950. A google search seems to indicate it might be another name for the x800 so I will base my answer on that. There are many different kinds of x800s, but you the basic AGP type goes for about $170. The price of RAM is completely dependant upon the brand, type and speed, but the general range would be $50 to $200 depending on the variables. You're probably receiving the lower end of that given your quote, so I'll pick $70 for the RAM just to be completely arbitrary. That gives the estimated end price for the parts at $240 US, leaving $60 (about 30 quid) for labor.

That seems completely reasonable to me, though I could give you a better answer if you indicated the exact video card and RAM you would be getting. If it IS an x800 card, you should be happy. ATI cards have a few more driver issues with RTW than nVidia cards, but they still perform well. Assuming you don't have a CPU bottleneck, you should be able to run at high resolution with all bells and whistles on Large unit size without a problem. Huge will work well too, but will slow down in multi-stack battles.