WOOF! That's a lot of dough for a soon to be 2 generation old card, but if you're stuck with AGP, there isn't a lot of choices and they do seem to be charging a premium. Before I upgraded my mobo, I was considering an ATI x1950Pro (actually bought one, but I had artifacting issues, and returned it). They seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth though.
Just got a nice MSI GeForce 8800GT (factory OC'd to 660 Mhz) for $200, but that's a PCI-E card (and, of course, I had to upgrade the mobo, processor and memory to go from AGP to PCI-E).
The interesting thing about the 7950GT card I bought is that 8800 series is faster and only by 10% for most applications. 7950GT is faster than the 8600 series and runs Direct X 9. No mother board modifications necessary. The stated price included tax and shipping. The GPU cost is $275.99. I paid premium because AGP cards are getting harder to find. 7950GT is a highest end nVidia card that I could find for my old computer. This is enough improvement for me because this card is twice as fast as the 6800LE it replaces.
Damn the polys full details ahead.:hehe: