I just bought:
Radeon X700 Pro AGP (256 MB GDDR3 RAM)
Sound Blaster 24 bit sound card (supports up to 7.1 suround)
Creative 5.1 suround speakers
I'm very happy with all this stuff...the main benifit will be that I can now program 5.1 surround into Gang War, and also the new video card will allow me to make a video with a decent frame rate, so that'll be ready sometime soon.
I'm NOT going to start upgrading the engine though with PS 2.0 stuff, which this card supports (my old 9250 didn't lol). I'm trying to get this game out the door sometime soon, though my next game engine will take advantage of every feature this card supports :-D
My old video card only had 64 MB of video memory, in my mind it's better to develop on a low end card...but I really think that was too low-end, if I'd been spoiled with 256MB of video memory, and this badass card the whole time....the game wouldn't run nearly as good as it does on low end machines.
Time to go "test" it out on Day of Defeat: Source which I've been obsessed with lately....I've yet to even see HDR lighting in person so this will be exciting :-D
Congrats on the upgrades. That seems pretty nice to me! I totally agree with you on programming down to the lowest common denominator. 64MB is still fairly common, and getting your game to run on that is great. What is even better, though, is also allowing users with 256MB cards to really push your engine by having options that can be enabled. Thats what I would recommend, personally.