chrishoops78 :
But the 8600gt was the schiznitz just 18months ago.
Not sure where you got that impression from as it was released as a mainstream card and has always been considered average or even sub par. It's best to do a bit of research before buying any sort of hardware, and a simple google search of "8600gt" brings up many dissapointing reviews and information like the following:
The Geforce 8600GT has been considered disappointing and underpowered by many, the main criticism being that it does not actually outperform the previous generation Geforce 7600GT by a wide margin ie. only average of 20 percent improvement in framerates in most games (though it operates at a much higher resolution), and is actually, in some games, slightly slower or on par with the 7600GT.
Architecturally, the GeForce 8600 series in particular is hampered by its lack of sheer processing power - it has just 25% of the full G80 core's stream processors - and also by its comparatively narrow 128-bit memory bus. Older video cards in the same price range, such as the GeForce 7900GS and GT, featured a much wider (and hence faster) 256-bit memory bus.
So expecting a midrange £70 graphics card to play Crysis (a Game designed to push high end hardware (Graphics cards of £300+) for the next few years) on high settings is a bit of a leap. You won't be able to play this game at full settings for a while yet, and certainly not with a cheap card as you are planning.
Anyway, I play Crysis at Medium settings at the moment (on my friend's year old £400 PC) and it still looks gorgeous. You should be happy that you got a card that cheap which can manage medium. As for the comment about an Xbox 360, it's cheap, yes, but there's a reason. It's a console and can pretty much only be used to Game and play movies. Microsoft also lose money each time they sell an Xbox, but make up for it with the games that cost twice as much as the same game on PC (except those games on a PC are modable, usually have more content and always look better on a half decent PC). PC's are far superior and infinately more useful than consoles and more than make up for any extra initial cost. I do everything on my PC, browse the net, listen to music, watch films and TV shows, organise my entire life and most importantly... gaming!
Hell, I can run all the latest games perfectly and have recently been playing all my old games (the earliest being more than 15 years old!) as well! No console has such a large back catalogue of games that work on them, hell, they have trouble supporting the previous generations games!
Sorry, got a bit ranty there, but basically what I'm trying to say is that a PC is an investment that will serve you well for a long time, but you can't cheap out and expect excellent results. I understand that money situation plays a part, but I'm in that boat too. I've been planning my gaming PC build for over a year now (it's changed an awful lot as new tech comes out and I have researched more) and will finally be in a position to buy it at the end of this month. It'll be replacing an 8 year old PC that I spent quite a lot of money on building it at the time, but it still works, and while I can't run many of the newer games, it still handles World of Warcraft fine, plays my entire retro gaming collection (which is huge!) and all my non gaming needs. I'm expecting the new one to last at least 3 years and still be able to play all the current games at relatively high settings, so that to me justifies the cost.
Ummm, hope that helps, or even makes sense. Kinda trailed off at the end.