$2000 first, let me doublecheck that
theyre around $1000, but still, litterally, for that much, i could build an awesome high end gaming rig, WITH a complete watercooling system, inclusing a seprate waterblock for the AMD 6000+ dualcore AM2 processor, 2 gigs of RAM, PC8000, some of the best RAM, with a low CAS latency, a nice motherboard with dual PCI-e, and a ATI X1950XTX PCI-e card, i dont rember if this card is cross-fire or not, but still, this rig is well afordable if your thinking about getting a mac, the rig i was going to build was a little over $1100, and it included the case, which had some nice little extras, like having the motherboard plate slide out and pop off for quick fixes. you could go Intel/nVidia, and it would still stay around my 1100 range. any gamer would love to play on this rig, and the dual core is nice as it works on some of my 3d apps, like 3DS MAX and C4D from MAXON does the multicoring even better, allowing up to 16 processors to be used. there isnt much on a mac that id actually use, i dont do movie editing, and my computer is alredy equiped with an X-Fi Platinum soundcard, THX certified, so ive alredy kinda got a media center.
as for crashing, unless your ******** and changing settings and stuff you shouldnt be, windows never crashes. altho this X-Fi card was a bit prone to IRQ errors, just moving it to a new slot fixes that. i havent had a crash or blue screen of death (BSOD) in 3 years, ive only owned the rig for a little over 4. http://www.Bob7k.com/ has all my stats from a long time ago, ive since added the X-Fi card and messed with some settings.